


Your Heart Makes

by schmerzerling



Series: Your Heart Makes [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Bad Parenting, Community: deancasbigbang, DCBB14, Depression, Disney World & Disneyland, Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 51,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2611220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmerzerling/pseuds/schmerzerling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is directionless, depressed, and working in one of the worst possible places to be so—Disneyland Park. Seeing hundreds of excited people every day, trying to smile for the customers, and dealing with the fact that his infuriating brother Gabriel is so readily capable of every park job he throws himself into makes Castiel feel like he could barely manage to keep his head above the foot of water in the “It’s a Small World” canal that he oversees. All of that changes when the universe sees fit to put him in a Disneyesque love story opposite the handsome animator in the window on Main Street who doesn’t care about Castiel’s lethargic lack of idealism—so long as he can make caustic Cas come to appreciate every attraction in the park. But life isn’t a Disney fairytale, and even though an easy out and a happy ending are what Castiel seeks, he’ll begin to wonder if the happiest ending isn’t really an ending at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright guys, here it is! My first [Dean/Castiel Big Bang](http://deancasbigbang.livejournal.com/). I actually like this fic still, and I've been staring at it for about six months straight, so I hope that bodes well for how you guys will like it. It's blatant self-gratification, and I'm hoping the boys plus Disney is as beautiful a combination for me as it is for all of you. This fic has been with me through some tough times and some hard changes in my life, and it means a whole lot to me, so I would love it if you could [check me out on Tumblr](http://schmerzerling.tumblr.com) and spread the love.
> 
> Insane amounts of thanks to all of the people who have helped me out with this, [literalcriticism](http://literalcriticism.tumblr.com/) and [gaelicblue](http://gaelicblue.tumblr.com/) who helped me through the last minute stuff so very generously, [cloudsiterations](http://cloudsiterations.tumblr.com) and [missreneechan](http://missreneechan.tumblr.com/) who assured me that it was even worth continuing at all, and my sister, who's a badass. And who isn't even in my fandom. And who is the Gabriel to my Castiel here, in all honesty.
> 
> Go and thank [dudewheresmypie](http://dudewheresmypie.tumblr.com) for the gorgeous art. It's amazing and she's an unsung hero for putting up with my ridiculousness and rampant procrastination. You can find her art masterpost [here](http://dudewheresmypie.livejournal.com/1089.html)!
> 
> It also has a ridiculous, Disney [playlist](http://8tracks.com/schmerzerling/your-heart-makes) to accompany it, because Dean in this fic is very musically inclined, just in a different way than you might expect.
> 
> Thank you, and please enjoy. <3

 

Dumbo didn’t need the feather to fly.

Four hours into his eight-hour shift, Castiel watched the hypnotic motion of the up-down-up-down elephants and thought, _Dumbo didn’t need the goddamn feather to fly._

That was the ending. At least, he thought it was. He’d only seen _Dumbo_ once, and it had been at Gabriel’s behest. From what he could remember, the ending was supposed to be all about believing in yourself and reaching for your dreams and never giving up. Or…something. The thing he always remembered most was the crying elephant, the racism, and the drunkenness, but parents seemed to have little regard for that as they plopped their little ones in the hollowed-out shell of a fictional elephant and sent them twenty-five feet into the air.

Either way, Dumbo didn’t need the feather to fly. Castiel still handed one to every kid waiting in line, and he got to see their faces light up when he gave them the magical relic that might as well be telling kids that they couldn’t fly on their own, they needed the help of the Disney Corporation to make their dreams come true. Castiel disliked the idea of it on principle, the magic of Disney burrowing deep under his skin in all the wrong ways. Disney taught kids that all their dreams could come true, but then they set up time limits and conditions and exorbitant prices.

Castiel circled his side of the ride, making sure that no one was set to fall into the fountain below when the ride churned to life. His primary partner for the day was Garth, and Castiel had to watch _again_ as Garth leaned down to talk to a kid and put his index fingers behind the shells of his ears to wiggle them like he was trying to make liftoff himself. Garth laughed, the kid laughed, the parent laughed. Castiel waited, foot tapping, for the operator to start the whole fiasco all over again. He had only seen Garth do this about a _thousand_ times since he’d started working here. ( _I understand_ , he’d deadpanned at lunch his first week when Garth had blown out his cheeks and directed the wiggling in his direction. _You have big ears, just like the elephant._ )  He swore that they assigned him to work with Garth just so Charlie could see him rolling his eyes on the security camera footage five times a day.

Garth was, like most of the people who worked here—even the people who sweltered years off their lives in full body suits all day long—a staunch believer in the magic of Disney. Castiel had once seen Garth cry when they walked past the big, bronze statue of Walt holding hands with Mickey Mouse in front of the Fantasyland castle. Castiel got the feeling that he was supposed to be a believer in Disney magic and dreams-coming-true, because he had to smile all day at people who paid a whole lot of money to immerse themselves in that magic for a few days of their lives, and honestly, he wished that he could. Actually believing in the bullshit he was selling would’ve made it a whole lot easier. But Castiel only had a job here because of his brother and his uneventful background check, and sometimes it was hard to believe in Disney magic when this wasn’t an escape. He came here to work, and at the end of the day, he had to go home to sleep alone on his brother’s couch and listen to Gabriel enthusiastically going at it with whatever prince or princess he’d selected that evening.

Dumbo didn’t need the feather to fly, but Castiel thought maybe _he_ did. He was still waiting on his crutch, his Timothy Mouse, but in the meantime, he stole the feathers sometimes. Compulsively, instinctively, superstitiously. He denied Disney magic, but he clutched them tight in sweating palms or tucked them surreptitiously in the pockets of his slacks like one day he’d collect enough that they’d form into wings and help him find some direction. He had a big stack of black feathers on top of Gabriel’s stereo at the apartment and maybe he worried a little bit about being found out, but kids stole them all the time and they were easy to replace. The stupid things were a dime a dozen.

They weren’t worth shit. Castiel knew that. It didn’t stop him stealing them, though.

He moved toward where Garth was chattering with two little girls sharing a green-draped elephant.

“Garth,” he tapped Garth on the back and flicked two agitated fingers toward the waiting attendant in the booth when Garth gave him a dopey look over his shoulder. Garth was delaying the start of the ride _again_ , apparently reassuring the girls in light of the fact that their mother, Castiel could see, was tearfully waving a camera from the sidelines and letting them ride solo. Garth patted the younger one on the head, whispered another couple of words, and flicked Cas an exaggerated thumbs up as he took his feet again. They both jogged to the safety of the booth and gave the operator the go-ahead to begin.

The operator started the pre-ride spiel, and Castiel tried to block out Timothy Mouse telling the kids to keep their hands inside the ride. It never did them very much good. Kids had their sticky fingers in the air all the time on this ride, and for the most part, Castiel didn’t care. It wasn’t like they were going to get lopped off if they didn’t listen.

Castiel said, “And here I thought you were shooting for a promotion.” He waggled a dismal forefinger. “If you keep delaying the start of the rides, they’ll never give you that audition. You’ll never get to be Goofy, then.”

Castiel meant _get to be_ with utmost sarcasm.

Garth stood straight with his lopsided smile and his eyes glued on the two little girls, waving and encouraging them to send the little elephant up up up. His eyes flicked toward Castiel as he mimed manipulating the little joystick in the air.

Garth took _get to be_ with utmost seriousness.

“Shucks, you know that’s what I _want_ , but s’long as I’m here, I’m happy. They don’t mind you spending a few more minutes makin’ nice with the kiddos, y’know. You’re the one who’s gonna get your tail shipped right out of Fantasyland if you keep up that attitude, Mister!”

That was always his threat, like to Garth, working in Fantasyland was the end-all, be-all of a Disneyland experience, and marinating in the slightly chlorinated miasma around Dumbo the Flying Elephant was the greatest of privileges. At least if he operated Space Mountain or Indiana Jones, he’d get to be inside.

“I think I’d live,” he grumbled. The kids waved at Garth on every go ‘round. Castiel just stood next to him and tried not to scowl. He _had_ been chewed out for scowling before, and he had no desire for a repeat performance, there. If nothing else, it would come around to Gabriel eventually, and Gabriel would ply him with baked goods and thinly disguised looks of worry, and Castiel would think of his mother, and the way she would always rub at the line between his brows and tell him not to scowl so much. And nobody wanted that.

One and a half minutes later, they got to unload the ride and do the whole thing over again.

It seemed that Garth found a friend every single time, another little boy or little girl or smiling teenaged couple in Mickey ears that he was able to relate to or make blush or make laugh. Castiel had to fight for every half-courteous laugh. Castiel went home at the end of the day absolutely exhausted of smiling. It hurt to know that he was this dysfunctional sometimes, to constantly have to wonder why happiness for other people cost him so much energy. But he didn’t dwell on it too much. He didn’t have the energy for that either.

* * *

Today, Gabriel played piano under a red and white awning on Main Street. He winked at kids and made faces into the mirror over the keyboard. He smiled winningly for pictures and pulled off some of the most impressive, exhausting performances that Castiel had ever seen anywhere. He was amazingly talented, even though all he was ever going to be for people was background noise as they ate a Mickey-shaped ice cream bar or a Mickey-shaped pretzel. It always amazed Castiel that Gabriel was just okay with that. Growing up, Gabriel had always wanted to be the center of attention. Gabriel had played the organ at church from a very young age, because everyone had known that he was gifted with a keyboard from day one. Gabriel absolutely hated it in some ways, but he’d loved taking center stage.

Castiel had always been jealous that Gabriel had played such an active role in the church ceremony, but he knew he could never perform like that himself. Not the way Gabriel did. He found himself working with a lot of actors and actresses when he came to Disneyland, and he found the whole persona that they all put on exhausting. He thought that maybe Charlie had the right idea in working with the tech department, coordinating the light shows and making sure all the pyrotechnics ran smoothly. Behind the scenes, you could have bad days, but Castiel never could. He needed to smile for children and parents and happy couples because no one ever had a sad time at Disneyland, cast members included.

Gabriel’s piano was in a little cage and up on a platform so that no one harassed him while he was playing, even though Castiel knew that Gabriel didn’t mind being bothered. He always gave back as good as he got. Sometimes he’d tap out less-than-flattering soundtracks for the customers going by if they gave him shit.

Gabriel could see Castiel edging in from behind in the mirror over his keyboard, and he winked when he drew closer, added a little flourish to where he was trilling high notes at one end of the piano. He had on a ridiculous striped vest and flat, wicker hat. Two kids were holding hands and dancing on the cobbled street outside the café, and warm light spilled from the glowing windows, illuminating Gabriel’s smiling face. Castiel got a Mickey-shaped pretzel and systematically plucked off the ears as he waited patiently for Gabriel to finish out his shift and take them home.

“How was Fantasyland today, kiddo?” Gabriel said when he’d finished his last song to the sound of scattered, polite applause. He stepped out of his cage, tipped his head back to flex his neck, then his fingers and his shoulders, stiff from today’s performance. Castiel stood to join him. “Still on Dumbo duty?”

“Yes.” Castiel scowled. Tried to reel it in. Scowled some more. “It wasn’t horrible. No lost parents. No vomit.”

Gabriel pulled a face and started walking briskly down Main Street. “Geez, I always forget how much vomit even the kiddie rides generate.”

Castiel rushed to catch up. When he fell into step beside his brother, Gabriel clapped him right on the shoulder blade, leading him with a subtle, forceful hand on his back for a moment. “It’s the up-down motion, I think. It takes them by surprise,” Castiel said.

Gabriel tugged at his immaculate bowtie and tucked his wicker cap under his arm. He looked down, did a little double-take, and winked as he tapped on the noticeable bulge in Castiel’s pocket, easily finding the hard, black plastic in his slacks. Gabriel was always wise to his game, somehow, even in the waning glow of the park’s night lights.

“Forget to put back another black feather today, did we?” Castiel colored and pulled the feather from his pocket, cradling it in his hands. “You’re gonna have enough to Icarus right over that fuckin’ Dumbo ride here in a bit. Just don’t let your hubris get the best of you and fly too close the tippy top of the Matterhorn.” He clapped Castiel on the back, raising his hand in a visionary sort of gesture at the top of the snow-capped Matterhorn where it was sandwiched between Sleeping Beauty’s castle and Tomorrowland. “I hear there’s yetis in there or somethin’. Gotta be careful.”

Castiel ran a finger over the smoothed-out lines of hard plastic, worn down to softness from being passed between pudgy little fists all day, every day. He was so busy looking that he didn’t notice when Gabriel stopped, and his turned down nose was nearly broken on the crown of Gabriel’s head.

“Hey—”

“Look,” Gabriel said, a little breathless. “He’s working late tonight.”

There was always an animator sitting in a window on Main Street with an inclined drafting table and a pad, paying homage to the traditional animation of their creator’s origins. Castiel walked by them almost every day, and it was one of those things that tourists stopped to ooh and aah over, but something that Castiel never quite registered. Gabriel, who swore up and down that he had a handle on absolutely every hidden Mickey in the park, was much better at appreciating the Disneyland minutiae.

Today, though, he stopped at Gabriel’s side, curling an absent hand in his brother’s sleeve. He felt his mouth fall open. It was the end of the day, and the animator had clearly been working at his current set of drawings for a long time. The one that flowed out of the tip of his pencil as he watched was a beautiful woman with long, curly hair, light and shining with a graphite aura. She had a delicate smile that the animator curled up underneath her eyes with a few strategic pencil strokes. He could see where just the barest of changes had been made from the last drawing, the barely-there increase in thickness where her wrinkles deepened in a smile. When he was able to tear his eyes away from the paper, Castiel saw that the animator was emulating the smile, tracing with light fingers over where the dips and wrinkles happened in his own face.

He twitched the pages back and forth, checking his progress, and the beautiful woman jumped to life like magic from the page, and a sparkling little star shape floated from the tip of her wand.

“It sort of looks like the Blue Fairy,” Gabriel said. “But not quite. The face is a little off.”

Castiel hummed a question beneath his breath, only half-listening.

“You know. The Blue Fairy. From _Pinocchio_.” Castiel shook his head, eyes still glued to the animator’s paper. Gabriel jabbed him in the side. “I never should have gotten you a job here, you pleb.”

“Shut up,” he said. And then, softer, “It’s gorgeous. She’s gorgeous.”

“Wow. That really does mean a whole lot coming from a raging queer like you. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Castiel was finally able to tear his eyes away from the picture to make a quick glance up and down the street, ensuring that no one had overheard. He glared daggers at his brother, who raised his hands in submission and settled in to watch the animator finish the rest of the woman’s body.

When Castiel looked back, she came alive before his eyes. Arms swept up, eyes tender, posture slightly bent, like she was talking to someone much younger with a kind, forgiving smile. By the time he’d finished the last sweep of her flowing skirt, the park was nearly empty, Gabriel was checking his watch, and Castiel was pressed against the glass of the window, perched on the very tips of his toes to see over the animator’s shoulder and the leather jacket thrown over the back of his chair. He felt like it was just the two of them as the window artist finished the page, turned to the side, and lifted the pad from the drafting table.

The silence pressed in around his ears when he flipped the pages just for Castiel, a simple little cycle of the woman bending, flicking her wand, and sending a starburst off the edge of the page. He clenched his fingers against the window glass, felt them smear and go bloodless. He felt sorry for the janitor that would come through tonight, cleaning the sticky paw prints of curious children much younger than him from the window where the artist worked his magic.

Castiel thought he had outgrown this feeling somewhere along the way. He hadn’t thought himself capable of it anymore.

“Are you satisfied, space cadet? Can we go now? I’m starved. The cleaning crew is about to start their rampage.”

Castiel nodded but didn’t look away, because the animator had raised his eyes to Castiel’s, holding them and keeping them for an endless moment, before he ducked his head and disappeared behind the shop curtain. Castiel was almost waiting for him to appear from the door of the shop and sweep him into his arms, because that had been maybe a bit too much like a goddamn cartoon, if the light, feathery feeling in his chest was anything to go by.

“Jesus, Castiel. You done with your moment?” Gabriel waved his hand in front of his face, right in the tight space between his eyes and the empty window. That was enough to make Castiel pull back and nod.

“Yes. Um. Yes.” He licked his lips. “Let’s go home.”

They crossed the big staff parking lot in silence, opting to walk all the way there. Castiel kept his hands in his pockets, and Gabriel kept glancing at him even after they’d gotten into the car and Castiel was sitting in the passenger’s seat.

“Man, I haven’t seen you look that excited about anything in a while. Not even before you dropped out. You looked downright enlightened.”

“Is he there every day?” Castiel asked in lieu of a response, tone a little distant still.

“Nearly.” Castiel furrowed his brow. “Look, sorry I don’t have his whole schedule worked out, geez.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Seriously, though. It was an alright look on you, little brother.”

They drove the rest of the way with only Gabriel’s top-forty bubblegum pop playing softly beneath everything else. Gabriel could play beautiful classical piano and flawless ragtime, but he still listened to the absolute drivel on the radio.

“You sure you don’t want to come out with me and the guys tonight?”

“No, thank you,” Castiel said, looking out the window.

Gabriel abandoned Castiel on the couch when they got in, tossing his red pinstripe onto the couch before disappearing into his bedroom to look for something more LA nightlife appropriate. Castiel didn’t have friends to go out with, and he knew he should be spending the evening looking for better jobs, thinking about going back to school, something. Something important.

Instead, he sifted through Gabriel’s DVD collection. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he shouted, “Gabriel, where do you keep your old Disney VHS tapes?”

“Who’s asking?” Gabriel called back. “I know it’s not _my_ little brother!”

Castiel found them in the hall closet without Gabriel’s help, and he blew dust off the tops of them, skimming titles as he went. _Pinocchio_ was there, toward the back, in a thick, plastic-covered case, and he waited until after Gabriel left to microwave himself some macaroni and cheese and watch it, alone on his couch.

He wasn’t expecting it to be quite as traumatizing as it was. He wasn’t sure why he was expecting magic after _Dumbo_ set a pretty good precedent for what-to-not-expect out of old school Disney movies.

Maybe he wasn’t expecting so many abandoned little boys who hadn’t done right by their parents.

Still, the Blue Fairy was a welcome sight, though she wasn’t nearly so beautiful as she had been hours ago, under the Main Street animator’s careful hand. But he fell asleep knowing that in the end, she made everyone’s wishes come true, and Pinocchio got to be a real fucking boy.

* * *

He went to see the animator again. On his own. To be sure of—something.

He was drawing a swirling ballroom scene, a character who looked like Beast with his hand poised in the air to spin a character who looked like Belle, except with a more delicate face, lighter hair, a mole on her face right between her brows. When the animator flicked the pages, her dress flew out to show her ankles. The animator’s table had a camera above it, and it was attached to a big screen so that he was able to see the finer details. He was sure that he was meant to take in the finer details of the drawing, but he used the opportunity to study the animator in great detail. He had a wedding band, which made Castiel’s heart twinge a little until he realized that it was too well-worn, too big to be his. And it was on the wrong hand. So he concentrated on the softness of his hands instead—the callouses where he held a pencil, the distinctive whorls of his skin, the stubby fingernails. Every once in a while, he let his eyes flick to the back of his buzzed head, where his hair was raised in shallow spikes from when he’d run his hand through it.

He was so entranced that it took Castiel a full minute to realize that there was someone in a striped red shirt with a rose boutonniere playing accordion music in his ear.

Castiel blinked, blinked again, rubbed his hand over his eyes. When he managed to find his way out of his stupor, he said, “Is that…‘Bella Notte?’” The accordion man nodded without stopping, a big, dopey grin on his face. He spun in a heavy, slow circle. People smiled at the accordionist as they went by, and Castiel could almost feel his ears burning. He edged away from the window. “No,” Castiel said. “Please stop.” The accordionist shook his head slowly, still with the same dopey smile. “Did Gabriel put you up to this?” Castiel whispered under his breath, getting in really close. The accordionist cackled and started to walk away, still blasting “Bella Notte” and nodding genially to children on his way down the street.

Once he cleared the area, Castiel could hear the tinny echoes of Gabriel’s piano at the café up the street, mocking him, and that evening, Gabriel grinned a smug grin at him all the way through dinner.

* * *

He was cautious about how he visited the animator for the third time. He made sure that it was in broad daylight, on his lunch break, because maybe His Animator wouldn’t even be there, and Castiel would fall just as in love with a new animator’s equally pretty drawings. It would be vindicating to know that there was nothing special, nothing Disney-esque about the circumstances of his introduction to this nameless vision.

This time there was a parade. The same parade that marched down Main Street pretty much every day at the same time, so he wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting. Maybe it was that he wasn’t quite expecting the quiet, introspective moment between him and the window and the absolutely perfect specimen framed in the glass, or that he wasn’t quite expecting the way that the world behind him exploded into drumbeat and song, like he was in some kind of musical production and any moment he was expected to jump in and sing along.

He pointedly tried to ignore the parade and focus on what was happening behind the glass, but it was a musical parade, and every new musical cue brought in a different swell of emotions, and by the time Aladdin and Jasmine were flying by on their gently waving mechanized-carpet parade float and their love song wafted around him, he felt like he’d been undergone one hundred clichéd movie introductions. The only saving grace was that everyone around him was too busy with the parade to notice, jostling one another all along the curb rather than looking at where he was leaning very pointedly against the window, not looking, not looking, not looking.

There was a tap on his shoulder. He thought it might be a parent trying to nudge him out of the way, and he had just turned to tell them to _fuck off_ when a camera flashbulb went off near his face.

It was Genie. The Genie from Aladdin. Big, blue, giant creepy smile right up in Castiel’s face. He took a step back, and the Genie took a step forward. They couldn’t talk, the characters, but the Genie held up three fingers ( _three wishes?_ ) and pointed between Castiel and the window, and his body language, so much as he was capable of conveying it in the layers and layers of the thick costume, was that of the utmost _sass_. Another parade-goer flashed a camera, and Castiel’s eyes clouded with it, the white aura lingering in his vision. To the side, he thought he saw the animator looking out the window, smiling with white teeth, but his vision was gone and Castiel was flushed to the tips of his toes and there were people _watching_ them.

Someone in the crowd said, “He can’t grant a wish for true love!” There was a little ripple of laughter.

Castiel looked right into Genie’s big, gaping maw, trying to see into the eyes of the asshole in the costume and said, “ _I swear to god if Gabriel put you up to this_ —”

But the Genie’s float was taking off without him, and he had to jog to catch up. He could only spare Castiel a clap on the shoulder with his big, gloved hand that nearly sent Castiel sprawling right there.

As Castiel turned his back to walk the opposite direction, to disappear into the milling crowd as they dispersed behind the tail end of the parade, Castiel remembered what the member of the crowd had been referring to—the Genie couldn’t grant wishes for true love. He’d seen _Aladdin_ a few years back, and he remembered not really liking that the Genie had constraints on the wishes he could grant. It never made much sense, an all-powerful being putting that kind of moralistic constraint on himself, as if it had been so much less egregious to _lie_ , to turn Aladdin into a prince. He was the same on the inside, and Castiel supposed that _worked_ for him, because he was painted as some picture of rough-edged perfection and inner beauty.

If the Genie couldn’t force feelings, he probably wouldn’t do Castiel a hell of a lot of good anyway. Castiel could wish to be a prince until he was blue in the face, could come to sit at the animator’s window on a jewel-encrusted palanquin. It wouldn’t matter. Castiel had something dark inside him, and he and the animator were in different worlds, irrevocably separated by a thin pane of glass.

* * *

They walked toward the break room after Gabriel's shift. Gabriel was meeting Kali and had proclaimed quite confidently that he wouldn't be home for the evening, so Castiel got to drive himself home for once. Gabriel celebrated his glorious step into adulthood with a gift.

Gabriel bought him ears.

“Only you could look that sullen with that on your head, little brother,” he said. Castiel knew that he had gone to special trouble to purchase them for him specifically, because his name was embroidered on the front in swooping yellow-threaded cursive, and ‘Castiel’ wasn't exactly so common that you could just grab it premade off the shelf at a souvenir shop.

The "i" was dotted with a tiny heart. There was a spotted pink bow glued right between the circular protrusions. The greatest indignity of all—they weren't _Mickey_ ears.

"I don't want these, Gabriel," he said. "And I've had my driver's license since I was sixteen, you know."

Gabriel turned to face Castiel, walking backward down the avenue and dodging perilously close to the meandering tourist population. He squinted his eyes and laid a finger aside his jaw, then adjusted them so that they were jauntily askew, one ear quirked upward at the crown of his head. "They look so nice on you, though! And I bought them special. Remember when we were little, and we'd go out to the coast on school breaks, and every shop along the Atlantic with cheesy souvenirs would have Mike and Gabe and fuck, even Luke. But they never had Castiel. Never even had a Cas. I'm simply repaying you for years of sacrifice." He rubbed at his nose, twitching a smile. "You know our brothers always bought that shit just to spite poor baby Cas who never even had a monogrammed sippy cup to his name. Tragic."

Castiel's heart twinged a little bit at the mention of their brothers. He didn't know what Michael and Lucifer were even doing nowadays, hadn't heard from them since the last time he'd heard from his parents. He missed them, even though they had committed a large portion of their childhoods to passive-aggressively ruining his. He didn't even know how he would go about contacting them now. Last time he had checked, his parents had changed their number, and if Gabriel had their contact information, he certainly wasn’t telling.

He shoved it down and didn't say anything more to Gabriel about the ears, because he didn't want to risk having the car taken away from him, and he was really looking forward to going to the grocery store on his own like an adult and buying everything he'd dreamed of eating in the last few months without any question from his older brother. Maybe he would stop by a drive-through at three in the morning just because he could, or maybe he would grab a bottle of something from the liquor store. For all that Gabriel was a total sugar fanatic himself, he always got a sour look when Castiel, littlest Castiel, who'd been eating broccoli and spinach straight-faced since the age of five at his parents' behest, had suddenly lost any concern for the quality or health benefits of what he put into his mouth.

Hell, maybe Castiel would go to a church service that wasn’t in Korean in the morning. Gabriel refused to let him take the car for church because he insisted that Castiel didn’t need anyone else telling Castiel he wasn’t good enough. The only church within walking distance of their apartment was some ambiguous denomination of Christianity that held their services exclusively in Korean. Castiel went and looked at the strange lettering on their Bible pages, sat at the back, and mostly just filled in the blanks himself based on what he knew from childhood. It would be nice to attend a service in English for once.

Gabriel and Kali had broken up last week. Today, they greeted each other with a make-out session for the ages. She was still in her Jasmine costume, and Gabriel didn't have much room to ruck the whole thing up underneath her little bra covering, but he managed to anyway, and Castiel looked very pointedly at the floor. It was kind of funny--the actor that generally played Aladdin, a straight-laced man whose name Castiel knew from the acid with which Gabriel spat it (fucking _Baldur_ ) was unconcernedly removing his wig and placing it delicately on a white mannequin head across the room. Castiel felt like he was ten years old again, sticking his tongue out at the floor when his fifteen-year-old brother brought home girls and made out with them across the room while Castiel was trying to do his homework on his bed. When he was done with his very thorough greeting, he made Castiel extend his hand, and then he put the car keys into his open palm like they were something very special, and like Gabriel didn't drive a battered old Honda Civic.

"I'm not an idiot, Gabriel. I can drive." He pocketed the keys. Gabriel looked at him like he was ten years old again too, eyes flicking up to the top of his head, but then he shooed him out of the break room and turned to go back to the business he had been getting to before. Castiel didn't need to be told twice. He had taken off his uniform already, so he walked out of the break room and prepared himself to leave the park, and he was about to take one of the employee exits when he remembered that there was no parade on Main Street, and Gabriel was too preoccupied with the potential of getting tail tonight to bother him or send someone to bother him, so Castiel went to see the animator again.

It was full dark. The days were getting shorter and Castiel felt like he kept getting out of work later and later, so he found his way to Main Street with bright bulbs and warm windows. The animator's window was no different. He was backlit by beautiful sconces, lit overhead by soft multicolored show lights. The starkest thing in the room was the lamp that the animator had hovering above his hand, perched just at the top of the inclined table, that cast everything on the page into bright, glowing beauty. The way his hands flickered over the page gave the illusion of movement before he even waved through the pages. He was drawing a character that Castiel recognized as being from Tarzan—the hunter. He couldn't remember the name. His features were dark and heavy, his hair disheveled and askew. He was hefting a double-barreled shotgun, and his teeth were visible in a grimace.

When the animator lifted the pages from the bottom and let them run, the animated sequence was a little bleak, just the hunter bringing the barrel of the gun up from the bottom of the pages until the very tip of the gun was leveled right at the artist himself.

Castiel got in close like he always did, and today there was something about the shoulders that seemed tense, held tight, and it made Castiel clench tight on the window to see it, his fingers squeaking a little bit against the glass. They left trails, and his hot palm misted the glass in a white fog.

The animator looked up at the sound over his shoulder, and in the split second before he caught sight of Castiel's face, he looked drawn and exhausted, heavy bags under his eyes like he had painted them there. When his eyes landed on Castiel's face, though, his face split in a grin.

He pointed to his own head with the pencil still held loosely in his right hand, then pointed toward Castiel with his left. Castiel furrowed his brow, patted up his head until he reached the Minnie Mouse ears that were still there, perched delicately on his head and strapped in underneath his chin. He took them off so quickly that his elbow gave an audible pop and his disheveled, too-long hair flopped down into his face.

The animator was laughing, but he couldn’t hear in through the glass. He could only see it in the way the dark skin under his eyes crinkled and his Adam’s apple jumped, and his mouth split wide open. Castiel felt his face heat until the animator held up a single finger, a _one-moment_ gesture, then reached underneath his drafting table to a little chest. Castiel couldn’t see the contents as he sifted through it for a moment, but when his hand came back up, he was carrying his own little set of ears.

His were much older, looked much too small for him, but he put them atop his head regardless, and when it was stretched tight over his crown, Castiel was able to make out a name, embroidered, same as Castiel’s was, in swooping yellow thread.

It said _Dean_.

Castiel said the words on reflex, even though he knew, reasonably, that he wouldn’t be heard through the layer of glass.

“Oh,” he said. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean gave a little smile, a little wave, and his mouth formed a _hi_ or a _hey_ in return. Castiel wondered if he had spoken it aloud as Castiel had. He disappeared behind his curtain again, and Castiel purposefully marched away before he could see if he would emerge from the door this time.

He threw the ears in the trash, and on the way home, he bought himself three cheeseburgers.

* * *

Those _hands_. He would probably be extremely dexterous, Castiel thought, and helped a little boy buckle into his elephant. It was blazing hot, the sky was a perfect and unhampered blue, and Castiel kept getting caught in his own head.

“You doin’ okay, man?” said Garth. He had his cast member nametag on upside-down, and Castiel had been waiting on a manager to tell him that it was incorrect all day long, but no one ever had. No one ever paid very close attention to Garth, because they knew that if they did, they’d find a wealth of things incorrect in the way that he operated, but he was just generally too pleasant to take much issue with. No one ever had that issue with Castiel. Castiel wasn’t overly pleasant. And Castiel, apparently, spent his shifts in Fantasyland fantasizing about all the wrong things.

He glanced around. The ride was running, elephants cut clear and bright against the blue sky as they made their cheerful rounds. It would be frowned upon to pop a boner when he was surrounded primarily by riders under the age of twelve, and there was absolutely no hiding anything in these slacks, the black feathers that he stole near-daily was a pretty good indication of that.

“Peachy,” Castiel growled and shifted where he stood.

“You’ve seemed even more strung out than usual today. Something happening?”

It was _sticky_ hot outside, too. The kind of air that promised rain but the kind of sky that never delivered. Maybe it was the weather that made him so suddenly and so intensely focused on the animator—on Dean’s—body. His hands. The way his tongue poked out of his mouth when he drew. The way his calloused fingers would feel rasping up his sides. He already felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“I’m not strung out.”

“’M not implying anything, I swear. But sometimes I think I get more out of these kiddos in just about the two minutes we know each other than I have outta you in the months since we started working together. You’re closed up tighter’n the West Wing.”

“…Than the what?” Castiel said.

Garth’s eyes bugged. “You know. _Beauty and the Beast_.”

Castiel nodded, impatient. “I’ve seen it.”

“Well if you’ve seen it, you know that the West Wing is where Beast kept his wilty life rose. The one with the falling petals?” Garth made a fluttery falling motion with his fingertips, waggling them parallel to the ground.

“Oh.” They had to take a break to unload and reload a new group of people. A toddler was in such a rush to make her way to the pink elephant, she face-planted into the loading dock and had to be soothed. Garth cooed over the mom and child, offering to call a medical team, and Castiel vividly remembered the lonely figure of the rose beneath the glass case, the magic mirror that the Beast used to spy on Belle.

 _Show me the girl_ , he said, the rumbly voice echoing in Castiel’s brain. _Show me the girl_. Creepy levels of voyeurism for a Disney film. Creepy voyeurism that Castiel was doing his best to emulate through his own pane of glass, quite frankly.

When the little girl was settled without a scrape and with a big lollipop for her troubles, Garth and Castiel settled in front of the control booth again, waiting.

Castiel said, “It wasn’t difficult to get into the West Wing.”

Garth blinked, then seemed to remember where Castiel had been taking the conversation before the crisis with the unhappy child. Children consumed all of Garth’s attention in a way they did not consume Castiel’s.

“What now?”

“It wasn’t _difficult_ to get into the West Wing,” he repeated. “Belle went right in. Beast really did not do a very adequate job of locking up his most treasured possession. He simply told her not to go there.”

Garth looked baffled. Castiel didn’t bother to tell him the real problem—no one had ever bothered to go to the West Wing. Not until Belle did.

* * *

Charlie came to meet Castiel in Fantasyland at the end of his shift a few days later. As she leaned on the fence outside his enclosure, Castiel saw her smile and wave at a Snow White a few feet away as she signed an autograph for a little girl in an identical blue and yellow dress. When Castiel's manager relieved him for the day, they made their way to the break room together, Castiel hot and sweaty in his uniform now that he wasn’t near the fountain and the whimsical, mercifully shady awning. On the way there, Charlie waved at two more princesses who couldn’t acknowledge her because they were in full costume, but Castiel knew a vaguely lewd and less-than-princess-like side-eye when he saw one, even if the gaggles of children swarming them didn’t. They even took a special route so Charlie could pass by the grotto where Gabriel’s friend Anna was flapping her tailfin and posing for a picture with twin baby boys. Ariel sat around in purple shells for half the day, and even she blushed to see Charlie smiling and winking from the sidelines.

“Jesus, Charlie,” said Castiel. “Have you slept with _every_ princess in the park?”

Charlie put the fingers she’d been wiggling at Ariel against her face thoughtfully. “I’ve never slept with an Aurora,” she said. “Or a Mulan. Geez, I can’t believe I’ve never slept with Mulan! She’s, like, one of the most badass princesses out there. Though technically, she’s not even a princess. You know, that always bugged me. Mulan isn’t even a princess and Kida really _was,_ she was like a princess of a whole entire dead culture, but they can’t be bothered to put _her_ on a lunchbox.” She huffed out a breath. “Kida’s a frickin’ badass.”

“I’m sorry,” said Castiel. “You’re just going to get upset with me again, as you always do, but who’s Kida?”

“Ugh.” She clapped her hand to her face. “The princess from _Atlantis._ I always forget what a Disney noob you are. You’d think that by now you would’ve made the effort to watch the movies. You’ve been working here, what? A year?”

“A year and a half.”

“A year and a half. And you haven’t seen enough unfamiliar merchandise to frustrate the ever-loving bejeezus out of you?”

“It’s almost as if I’ve seen every movie secondhand at this point, anyway. All I need do to understand the new movies is go see the window displays at the Emporium.”

Charlie snorted. “You’re not really a nuance kind of a guy, are you?”

Not in so many words.

“Honestly, what I can’t really get behind is the,” he waved his arm vaguely, searching for the right word. “ _Fantasy_ of it. The sheer indulgence.”

“Yowch,” Charlie said, sounding genuinely affronted. She clutched at her chest, fingertips dragging the folds of her t-shirt. “How did we ever become friends, again?”

“Rollercoasters.”

“Rollercoasters, right.”

“And you like how very cheerful I am, obviously,” Castiel deadpanned in his gravelly monotone.

“Yeah, clearly. You’re a ray of sunshine.” She slung an arm around his shoulders and shook.

When she let him go, Castiel looked into the distance, framing the face of the Small World clock with his thumbs tapped together and his index fingers straight up. “I’m a realist.”

“A pessimist, more like it.”

They stepped into the break area. Someone in a massive blue and purple-furred monster costume was panting and fanning himself with a well-worn paper Disneyland map. He had his tail slung straight out behind him, and Castiel nearly tripped, swearing openly now that there weren’t any kids around to put on an act for. He went into a bathroom stall to change, deliberately mussed his hair to its debauched standard, and _after-youed_ Charlie out of the break room again, leaving his sweaty uniform hanging behind him.

He’d met Charlie through Gabriel, but she was one of the only ones that’d stuck with him after the first forcibly courteous introductions that Castiel had gotten to all of Gabriel’s many, many friends when he’d first started sleeping on his couch a couple years ago. The sticking power probably had something to do with the fact that she liked girls and Castiel liked boys and they bonded over the fact that Disney had never made a movie about _them_ —even though she liked to speculate otherwise. Charlie had practically introduced herself by talking about the drag queen that Ursula was based on. Back in the beginning, when Castiel had been talking even less than he did now, she’d filled up the silences. It had been nice, how cheerfully optimistic she was about her sexuality. He’d never encountered something like that back home.

And she’d taken him on all the coasters. That had been even nicer.

“You look like a man who’s in need of Space Mountain at least twice,” she said, veering them away from the break room in the base of the Matterhorn and toward Tomorrowland. The music changed abruptly as always, fading from the trilling ups and downs of Fantasyland to the beeping, techno undertones of Tomorrowland.

Castiel wasn’t a fan of the lines or the crowds or the characters or the themes. But he liked the coasters—here, and in California Adventure across the way—and Space Mountain was his favorite. He liked to close his eyes and feel like he was flying. He’d never actually ridden Dumbo the Flying Elephant, but he couldn’t imagine it would feel anything like this. He’d never ridden It’s a Small World either, and he had no intention to. He could imagine, based on the shell-shocked expressions of the people emerging from its churning maw, that it felt a bit like a slow descent into hell in there. He’d never ridden on the Haunted Mansion, or Pirates of the Caribbean or any of the little Fantasyland pieces either. He’d never felt the need. Charlie had tried to goad him into the Winnie the Pooh ride after Big Thunder Mountain one day, and he had calmly explained to her that if he could still think clearly during a ride, and if all the blood wasn’t in his head, and if the world wasn’t rushing by his ears at forty miles an hour, and _especially_ if there was any kind of repetitive soundtrack in the queue or otherwise he simply was not interested _._

Charlie had put on a face like she hurt for him and bought him a Mickey-shaped ice cream bar like he was five years old. Just another item on the list of things he didn’t expect out of her, and another notch on the bedpost of _people-you-don’t-deserve_ , right behind Gabriel and his completely judgment-free compliance with the permanent Castiel-shaped imprint in his couch.

He let Charlie chatter at him all the way through the queue. She was used to it, picking up the slack in the conversations, but today Castiel jumped in with, “I met someone,” about three-quarters of the way into a story about an awkward hook-up with the six-foot-four girl in the Jafar costume.

She blinked and went silent. They shuffled a half step forward. Castiel half expected disbelief from her, but that wasn’t Charlie and it never had been, and she just clapped him on the back and said, “You dog! Why didn’t you lead with that info? I would’ve shut up, like, ten minutes ago about lady Jafar. She wasn’t even a very good lay. Where’d you meet him?” She grinned so hard for him that it crinkled up under her eyes. “What’d you do? What he say?”

“I. Well that’s the thing. He hasn’t _really_ met me yet.”

There was no not-pathetic way to tell someone that your encounter had mostly consisted of you gazing through a window at someone who didn’t know you existed and then counting the butterflies in your stomach for the rest of the night, but he tried. As they got closer to the front of the line, and the room opened up into a big space hangar, he detailed the face to her instead. The nose. The eyes. The hands. The look of concentration. The—

“What was he drawing?”

Castiel blinked his way out of a vaguely pornographic fantasy. “Huh?”

“You heard me. What was he drawing? He’s the animator right?”

“Oh. The, uh. The first time, it was The Blue Fairy.” And then, because he could this time, he said, “From _Pinocchio,”_ with an air of great authority.

“The first time, huh? And honestly, doofus, I know what The Blue Fairy is from,” she said. “The question is, how do _you?_ ”

“I’ve seen _Pinocchio_ ,” he said, defensive. Charlie crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows just about as high as her face would allow. “I saw it a few nights ago,” he admitted.

“Geez, you watched a _Disney_ movie because of this guy? Not even a year working in the park could work that magic. He must be something special. You’ve got, like, classic Disney glint in your eye. Like—like Sleeping Beauty. Or like, Cinderella-esque love at first sight.” She put her hands in the air like she was ballroom dancing and did an unsteady little three-step right there in line. The people in the queue behind them gave her the hairy eyeball when she bumped into the line’s guard rail with a loud _clang_. Castiel nodded them an apology for her. “Seriously, have you seen your dumb lovey-dovey face, dude? You watched _Pinocchio._ ”

He had. He’d liked it. The Blue Fairy was beautiful.

They got into the ride not long after, Castiel and Charlie jammed in close in one of the tight little carts near the end.

Space Mountain was his favorite. Other coasters were wonderful, to be able to shut his eyes and imagine flying through the air, but on Space Mountain, he could keep his eyes open, and he was outside of himself, outside of this earth, riding high on some kind of otherworldly energy that he would give just about anything to harness, exhilarated and happy in a way that he didn’t really feel all that often anymore. This was just about the only thing that got his blood pumping, besides. Well.

Besides Dean. But not even _he_ came to mind as they were flying through the air in the dark, whizzing by stars and planets with some kind of concentrated celestial intent.

For all the time they’d waited in line, the ride was only a few minutes long. Dumbo didn’t need the feather to fly—Castiel did. The shaky feeling in his legs getting off, getting reaccustomed to gravity and to corporeality and to the constraints of the universe as he knew it must’ve been a little like what withdrawal felt like.

It was also a bit like what he felt like what he’d felt, walking away from the window that night with Gabriel.

“You up for another go around, Captain?” Charlie said. Her hair was mussed, and she was grinning ear to ear.

“No, I. I want to show you.” She grinned even harder. They stepped out of the inner sanctum and into the streets, where Castiel was almost surprised to find it had gotten dark while they were waiting for their three minutes of excitement.

“Ohhh your boooyfriend? Meeting the folks already? Things must be getting serious,” Castiel mouth turned down at “meeting the folks”—a choice set of words he could’ve done without. It made him think of Pinocchio last night, alone and afraid in the screaming den of iniquity that was Pleasure Island. Take away the cigars and the liquor and the pool, and Pleasure Island and Disneyland weren’t so different. Everyone made asses of themselves either way eventually.

They walked there with Charlie purposefully letting Castiel lead the way, meandering behind him and taking in the sights and sounds and smells of a Disney evening. It was almost picturesque that when they reached the window, literally the moment he saw him sitting at that drafting table again, fireworks started shooting overhead. Their booming was so commonplace for Disney workers that he hardly paid them any mind anymore, but the way they reflected in the window and lit up Dean’s pale skin and cast the whole world in shimmering tones of yellow and red and blue made him—made him—

“Oh, come on,” he said to the sky, probably loud enough that the animator inside could hear him. The kids that still had their attention fixed on the art inside, that weren’t wholly distracted by the fireworks show already, turned around when he shouted, surprised. “Seriously!” He turned to Charlie and said, softer, “No, seriously? Every time I see him it’s like a goddamn Disney parade. A few days ago there _was_ a Disney parade.”

“Did the drumline march right along with the beat of your heart, Cas?” she laid a closed fist on her chest and pounded twice. _Tha-thump._ Then she actually turned to focus on the animator, her eyes going straight to the screen over his head as her eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

Over their heads, the announcer said, _I believe there’s magic in the stars…_ And it was cheesy and corny and Castiel did not, did not, did _not_ buy into it.

“Cas that looks like—”

“No. This is stupid. I was stupid to want to show you this.”

“Cas look at the screen,” she whispered, tugging him close, actively diverting his attention from the way that the animator’s shoulder blades writhed under his shirt when he drew.

It was the prince from _Sleeping Beauty._ (“Prince Philip,” Charlie supplied unprompted. “The one that slayed the big ole Maleficent dragon and didn’t get explicit consent before kissin’ his dame.”) He had a hunting cap with a jaunty feather, and he was hefting a sword with a fierce and determined look on his face.

But when Castiel took a closer look at his face in the illuminated picture on the screen, the face looked hauntingly—familiar.

“Cas, are you absolutely sure,” she said slowly, jabbing a finger at the hard jaw and the shading of five o’clock shadow and the broad nose and the wide-set eyes and the big mouth and the heavy lids and the prominent cheekbones and the flush that spread high across his face and the bridge of his nose, each in turn. Castiel hadn’t seen the movie, but they were features that he knew. “Are you _absolutely sure_ that the two of you haven’t been introduced?”

Mostly, they were features he knew from the mirror every morning.

Castiel took off, fireworks still booming behind over his head.

Charlie shouted after him, “Cas, why the hell are you running away! This is some Disney magic, right here! Stick around and wait for him to plant one on you!”

That was exactly the problem. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.” He looked at the park-goers, certain that all their eyes would be fixed on him, but most of them were single-mindedly working their way toward the park exits and spared him only passing glances, unconcerned with Charlie’s sudden desire to _out him_ to the park at large.

When he reached the café, Gabriel was still playing piano for the groups of people casually strewn about the nighttime Main Street landscape, watching the parents with tired children slung over their shoulders meandering out. He was bidding them an exuberant farewell, but when he saw Castiel, shaking and upset, the music shifted into something more somber. Castiel pushed his hair out of his face and tried to stay calm. He paced a little circle by the piano and got a few critical stares, parents pulling their children away from him, toward the other side of Main Street and the shop windows over there. A vendor selling bright red light-up roses and an assortment of other glowing knick-knacks a few feet away stared at him unabashedly, and he tried to calm himself down. He was finally able to take a seat at one of the tables when a young couple took their leave, and he tapped his fingers until Gabriel was finished.

His breath went short. His heart sped up. Across the buzzing patio, Gabriel’s lilting lullaby was the only thing that kept Castiel grounded despite the way the world spun around him. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. Gabriel called it a _panic attack_ and talked about _anxiety_ , but his mother had always just called them _dizzy spells_ every time he got so anxious in church his head started spinning.

It’ll pass, she’d tell everyone. Don’t _pander_ to the boy.

Gabriel was at his side. When he put a hand on his back, Castiel flinched. He backed off. Over his shoulder, Castiel could see the bright red of Charlie’s hair.

“I’m alright,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“What’s up, kid?” he said. Castiel looked at him, dazed. He hadn’t even taken off his wicker hat. They usually didn’t want cast members walking around, having personal conversations in their park costumes. There was a professional boundary that they didn’t want their workers to break. Castiel reached up with a shaky hand and took off Gabriel’s hat, bringing it down to sit in his lap, because Gabriel’s job was _important_ to him. Gabriel watched him with a baffled smile, eyes following his hand up, then down, tracking the path that his hat took. “You not like the head gear?”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Castiel unsteadily. He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. Then he reached for Gabriel’s rose boutonniere and took that too, cradling it between two hands. It was a fresh rose with soft, real petals, just like it always was. Gabriel looked puzzled.

“What doesn’t make sense?” Gabriel said, mostly to Charlie over his shoulder. Castiel put his hand on his chest and focused on breathing normally, glad that he hadn’t allowed this to escalate into something full-fledged. The night that he’d been forced to clean out his dorm room at school, he’d had a panic attack so intense, he’d thought his heart was going to stop. He’d actually thought he was going to die.

Charlie said, “This is good, though, right?” Castiel gave her a murderous look, silently entreating her not to talk about what they may or may not have seen.

 _That’s not for me,_ he wanted to say. _That’s not for me_. It got stuck in his throat.

Gabriel and Charlie exchanged a few quiet words above him as Castiel set about systematically stripping petals off the rose, letting them fall to the ground beneath him. It was a game of _He loves me, he loves me not_ that Castiel already knew the answer to. He stopped short of the last three petals and let the whole thing fall to the ground.

When he looked up again, Charlie was gone, and Gabriel was looking at him with soft-sharp brown eyes.

“Cas,” he said. “I know I’m not exactly brother of the year as far as heart-to-hearts go, but you have to know that I know something’s not right with you. D’you ever think you might be—y’know—”

“Shut up.”

“—Depressed? Don’t say ‘shut up,’ I’m not gonna to shut up, you shut up.”

“Shut up,” Castiel repeated, and in staying true to his own command, he refused to say anything as they made their way out of the park and took the shuttle to their parking lot, because Castiel was drained, absolutely dead on his feet, too tired to walk.

He knew Gabriel was supposed to go out that evening, knew he had some kind of get-together with some other park workers that Castiel had originally been invited to, even though he _knew_ nobody liked him. They just invited him because he was Gabriel’s brother.

Instead, Gabriel sat with Castiel on the couch in his pajamas and watched a crackly old VHS copy of _Sleeping Beauty_. He recognized it as something that had sat on the shelf at their old home in the east, something he’d looked at a thousand times. It was strange to have it here, in this apartment, surrounded by Gabriel’s life and Gabriel’s things and no trace of their mother or his older brothers.

Castiel cried when the brave Prince Philip slayed the dragon, and Gabriel didn’t say a word.

* * *

The God of Good Cheer saw fit to punish Castiel with a new and unfortunate job assignment the following week—maybe because they knew about his massive stack of feathers. Maybe because he’d chastised Garth in front of the customers at Dumbo one too many times. Maybe because one of the supervisors had seen him returning to Main Street to ogle the window animator in a way that wasn’t wholly appropriate for the family friendly Disney environment. More than likely, it was probably his scowl. His mood hadn’t improved in recent weeks. It got harder and harder to smile at the kids he was helping, regardless of the ways in which Gabriel tried to help him.

“I can hear the music radiating from the mouth of the ride. You’d think it would be better being outside. But the fact that it’s so distant almost makes you think, ‘Am I really hearing it now? Or have I just gone insane? Is this just the way it’s going to be from now on?’” Gabriel chuckled. “And the clock tower. It ticks. All day. Really, all day.”

He didn’t say it, but his new rotation also meant that his schedule clashed with Dean’s, and he couldn’t make it to see him anymore.

Gabriel was wearing chaps today, which meant he’d probably spent the day playing piano in the Golden Horseshoe with a fake mustache pasted to his upper lip. Gabriel was born for his job here in a way Castiel would never be. Sometimes Castiel could almost bring himself to be jealous.

“Small World can’t be all bad, my friend. You know, Prince Adam is kind of over there sometimes,” Gabriel whistled lowly, wiggling his fingers on the wheel. “And the lovely Jasmine sometimes wanders into town. I’d say you’ve got it pretty good. The only eye candy I’ve had for the past week is Jessie the yodeling cowgirl and the rest of the round-up gang. And that sweet gondolier aesthetic you’ve got going over there? Better than these babies.” He indicated the chaps and the checkered shirt he wore with them. “It’s a rough gig for all of us, bro.”

“You know you’re not supposed to wear the uniforms home, Gabriel,” he chastised.

“Are you kidding? The Disney Company makes some _fine_ quality leather works.” He plucked at the leather fringe where is splayed out beside his thigh. “You know how good these babies look without the denim underneath?”

“Gabriel,” Castiel said.

“Assless,” Gabriel said, slapping his flank.

“Gabriel. I’m not sure why I’m the one that has to tell you not to do this with Disney property when I’m the one without the Disney spirit, here.”

“Don’t pretend like you’ve never thought of having kinky gondolier sex.” Castiel shuddered.

“I hope you don’t do this in your Jungle Cruise shorts.”

Gabriel snorted. “Why wouldn’t I?” He put on his Jungle Cruise voice, pantomimed holding the boxy little microphone in front of his face. “If you look to your left you’ll see the natives of this jungle, world-renowned for the length of their spears.” He winked and wiggled his butt a little in the seat. “You know how much Kali likes the _I can show you the world_ schtick.” The continual heavy traffic around the park meant that Castiel knew little bit more about Gabriel’s sex life than he ever wanted to, including his on-again-off-again relationship with Princess Jasmine. “You haven’t even thought about doing the do with your animator beau? Handie-j surrounded by the peaceful children of many nations? Mr. Toad’s _Wilder_ Ride?”

“Eugh,” he colored. Gabriel had never taken the _I don’t want to talk about him_ hint, so he still talked about Dean all the time, every conversation he could drag him into. And to be fair—Castiel would be lying if he said that he hadn’t thought about at least one part of that statement. “Do you save these things up? Have you thought about obscene acts on _every_ single attraction?”

They pulled into their apartment complex. “Let’s just say I’m a little disappointed they took out the Rocket Rods, sport.”

Cas tried to take Gabriel’s youthful optimism to heart—almost desperately. He wanted to feel okay. He wanted to be able to appreciate the little things around him. But it was hard when he came home, and there was another loan payment due in just a few days, and the only email in his inbox was a newsletter about _entry level_ jobs that his half a college degree didn’t even slightly qualify him for. He scoured Craig’s List for something that he might be able to subsist on, found nothing that would pay him more than he was making currently with his bullshit costumes and his feather collection. And when he went to his ridiculous Korean church services, the only words playing in his mind over and over and over were his own, a silent cycle of _you’re not good enough you’re not good enough you’re not good enough._

He went to work on Monday with determined good cheer. He tried to notice the way that the flowers were still blooming here, even though it was edging into October. They’d be getting the first snowfall in the east soon enough. He tried to notice the happy kids and happy families and the way the water reflected the stark white face of the Small World ride. He tried to imagine what Gabriel would appreciate—the tinkling soundtrack, the unique laughs of each customer, the cute ladies.

It lasted through roughly the first hour of It’s a Small World Hell. He knew that it was only an hour, because It’s a Small World had its very own built-in Hell timer, and a train that whistled serenely through the ride itself every ten or so minutes as another ticking reminder of how very slow time passed when you were listening to the same song—the same children’s-chorus piece of musical pabulum—for nigh on eight hours a day. It didn’t take long to fall back into the mechanical way he’d come to conduct himself lately, ushering people on and off the ride with false cheer and the same set of canned and meaningless words.

He tried hard to keep Gabriel’s particular brand of optimism in mind though, and he cast about for the prince. If nothing else, it would maybe stop him thinking the endless, repetitive mantra of _not for me not for me_ that had taken up residence in his mind years ago, that had been loud to start, that had been drowned out by a carefully maintained, staticky malaise, and that had, in the last week, somehow been blasted all the way to full volume once again. He looked over the edge of the carefully maintained topiaries to where Belle and Beast signed autographs when they weren’t at their restaurant on the other side of Fantasyland. Beast was always in his blue jacket, but sometimes he was in beast form, and sometimes he was the prince.

Today, he was the prince. _He’s handsome_ , Castiel thought distantly, eyes focused fuzzily on the tall figure he cut against the backdrop of bright green leaves. There was something familiar about him, though, and Castiel thought maybe it was his hand where it rested on Belle’s trim, gilded waist. It was broad, and he was having distractingly unwelcome thoughts about it as It’s a Small World provided the soundtrack to his shame.

“You oglin’ my little brother?” came a voice from the front of the line, all but shouted to reach him across the little river. There was a smile in it, but Castiel flinched to hear it, face darkening in a blush. “Fickle, man. Brutal.” His harried coworker, nowhere near as tolerant of his shit as Garth had been on Dumbo, was unloading a family with four screaming children without his help. Castiel ignored his stink-eye and looked up.

There wasn’t much of a line to speak of, because this was, after all, It’s a Small World in the heat of the afternoon, in the off season, on a weekday. There was still a family ahead of him, blocking Castiel’s view, and they cast scandalized looks in the man’s general direction as they loaded into their little blue boat. When they were all in, when their boat was totally full, Castiel was able to see the new person first in the queue, and his stomach dropped straight through the dock he stood on.

“I only ask because I’m used to you oglin’ me! I think most guys would’ve assumed you were eyein’ Belle over there.”

Dean. The animator. The voice had been unfamiliar, but oh it _suited_ him perfectly. He couldn’t imagine him sounding any other way now he’d heard it. It had been at least a week since he’d stalked him through his Main Street display, and he was like a vision. The face. The nose. Those _eyes_ —those, Castiel knew. Those, Castiel was intimately familiar with.

He pulled the flat gondolier hat down over his hot face, which was ridiculous, because he knew who he was, knew he was here, there was no way he couldn’t. Words stuck hard in his throat, first and foremost being, you’re perfect, what on earth are you doing in the queue for It’s a Small World of all things _?_ Second being, why on earth can’t you smile like that when you’re drawing? When he was animating, he kept the same serious, tongue-out, brows-furrowed face most of the time, with the exclusion of the soft smiles he sometimes got when he flipped his pages for children with their faces pressed against the window. Third being, why the hell are you wearing that leather jacket? It’s fucking _eighty degrees_ out here. The fourth was nothing more than a silent prayer that he wouldn’t ask Castiel to speak to him or explain himself.

He didn’t. He just got into one of the little boats, seated alone in the front row with one small family bouncing in behind him.

He looked a little silly there, all alone, knees tucked in close to his chest. Castiel heard him nattering with the kid behind him, saw him giving the kid a reassuring little thumbs up as the boat scraped the bottom of the narrow canal before taking off.

Just before he rounded the bend, disappearing beneath the bridge where the queue still meandered, Castiel could have sworn he—winked. Right at him. And when he exited fifteen minutes later, all toothy smiles, like he hadn’t just endured a real trial, he clapped Castiel on the back and waved his way out of the ride. About the only thing Castiel could manage was a vague, baffled wave back.

* * *

The next day, he came back. Castiel was able to restrain the hyperventilation as he loaded into the boat because Dean could clearly sense that he didn’t really want to talk. But when he stepped out his boat, he tripped on the little gap between the boat and the dock. Castiel wasn’t even paying attention, he was very determinedly dicking around with the control unit and letting the same long-suffering coworker extricate this family (and one dude in leather jacket) from the boat.

Until he _actually fell on him_ in a tangle of limbs that sent Castiel toppling to the ground as well.

Fell _into_ him. Castiel was about to turn to him, tell him this wasn’t a movie and that didn’t actually _work_ , but he seemed genuinely lightheaded for a second, licking his full lips and looking around, and Castiel was once again struck by the fact that he couldn’t keep _looking_ at him or this weird Disney magic in his gut was _gonna_ keep happening and it was not for him not for him not for him.

He let him help himself to his feet—nothing romantic about that. It was just about number one on the list of Disneyland no-nos. He was pretty sure that when he’d been working in Fantasyland proper, he’d seen them send wheelchairs for splinters. The same coworker that got to do just about everything while Castiel slouched in his depressive funk rushed to help him up, but Dean just shrugged him off with a half-hearted little snarl and didn’t bother to look at Castiel as he left.

* * *

He came back. He dropped an expensive-looking pencil on the dock outside the ride, and when his coworker handed it to him to throw away or take to lost and found, he knew just looking at it that Dean’s big, pretty hands would fit into the grooved indents on the pencil’s surface.

Castiel threw it into the canal.

But he kept coming back. And Castiel didn’t know what to do with that.

* * *

Break rooms at Disneyland were strange, because he was almost certain that it was the only place you could bum a smoke off a princess. Today, Megara was leaning against a wall just outside the break room, smoke curling over the top of a Donald Duck topiary, just visible above the top of the brick. The low thrum of the crowd outside was just barely audible beyond. She wordlessly offered up the cigarette box in her hand, and Castiel took it to tap one out with a vague thanks.

Megara eyed his uniform up and down as she blew out another ring of smoke and ashed onto the pavement below.

“Small World?” she said with the impeccable bite of the Meg from the film. “Tough break, buddy. What’d you do to land yourself there?”

Castiel snorted around the end of his cigarette. “I imagine I wasn’t quite cheerful enough with Dumbo the Flying Elephant. So they put me in a position where they force brainwashed cheerfulness by way of mindless, repetitive music.”

She laughed. “I’m lucky. They pay me to be a sarcastic twat. People eat that shit up.”

“I hear your wig is quite heavy, though.” He ran a hand through his own hair, messy and a little sweat-slicked from the afternoon heat. When he looked closer, he saw that there were rivulets of sweat running from under the dark brown hair piece, balanced and practically cemented in place on top of her head. She kept her neck stiff and her head still when she shrugged.

“We all have to bleed a little for Mr. Disney.” She waved her hand in the direction of the Disney statue in the center of the park. “Name’s Meg.”

Castiel canted his head. “Your real name is…?”

“Yeah, I get that a lot. I think maybe she was the character I was born to play, because, yes, my actual name is Meg too.”

The actress that Castiel recognized as Belle slouched into the alley and gave Meg a familiar greeting. Meg returned with a vague, “Hey,” but kept looking at Castiel with heat behind her eyes. He got the strange sense that the intensity with which she looked at him was less her Megara persona than he had initially assumed, and maybe had more to do with Castiel himself. She looked like she wanted to eat him. He wondered how he could even get that kind of attention with his baby blue pants and his blousy shirt and his piss-poor attitude.

Belle wasn’t in her big, gold dress, instead back in the plain street clothes she’d probably come to work in—which was good, because Castiel honestly wasn’t sure how she fit through the door in that thing—but her hair was still in an immaculate Belle half-bun, and she held her cigarette in a dainty grip between gloved fingers.

“Christ it’s hot. I thought this fuckin’ heat was supposed to die down soon,” said Belle. She left a ring of red on the filter of her cigarette where her pretty lipstick bled.

Now that Meg’s hungry eyes weren’t directed at Castiel, he stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and went to retreat to the break room and then back onto Main Street where he could watch not-his-animator and attempt to convince himself that he cared half as much about the way this one’s hands moved over the page.

When he opened the door to go back inside though, Gabriel waylaid all his plans by busting out at him, sweeping Castiel into his arms.

“You smell like an ashtray, bro.” Gabriel wrinkled his nose. “Smoking when I’m not here to watch out for it? For shame.”

“I thought your shift didn’t start until this evening.”

 “Picked up a couple Jungle Cruise tours! I just couldn’t keep away.” He clapped Castiel on the back and looked halfway serious for a moment. “Seriously, I thought we broke you of that nasty habit when I told you that you weren’t allowed to smoke on my balcony anymore ‘cause it was killing my hanging plant.”

The girls tittered, and Castiel’s ears burned hot. Gabriel looked over his shoulder, eyes lighting up.

“Yeah, well, I unbroke myself.” Castiel muttered, but Gabriel was already lapping up the attention of the women by the wall.

“Where are you off to so fast when we have such lovely company here?” Meg raised a sardonic eyebrow. Belle looked put out. Both of the women were pretty petite—Castiel stood at least a head taller than them. Gabriel just about looked them in the eye. “Wait. Don’t tell me. I think your beau’s on display in the window on Main Street, isn’t he?”

“Gabriel please,” Castiel said in warning, glancing between the women, fists clenched. He didn’t allow them to loosen until they showed no immediate signs of visible disgust. And then, against his better judgment, he whispered, “He’s not even there right now anyway.” Gabriel crowed. He had latched onto the animator because it got a rise out of Castiel—it was one of the only things that ever did. He brought him up at meals, on the drive home, and apparently on breaks, when Castiel was certain it was wholly inappropriate. He asked if Castiel had spoken to him yet. He talked about the Blue Fairy and Prince Philip. Castiel couldn’t fathom why Gabriel couldn’t just _let it go._

Gabriel grinned. “Got his schedule all worked out do you?” He gave Castiel a friendly punch in the arm, and even though it didn’t really hurt, Castiel rubbed at it sullenly. “Don’t pretend, kiddo!” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “He’s sweet on the animator on Main Street,” he cooed.

“Gabriel,” Castiel said on a harsh exhale, all the air leaving his lungs at once, a gaping void left in his chest.

“Even though he’s never spoken to the guy!” Belle snorted a laugh. Meg raised an interested eyebrow. Neither seemed to want to lynch him. That was good, but even so, Castiel went red.

 “I have so!” he said, even though all the times they had interacted verbally, he technically hadn’t done any of the speaking. In his mind, he’d held all kinds of grandiose conversations, most of which ended in hard, cold rejection. “I’m not sweet on him. I just appreciate his artistry.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, a sarcastic _amirite ladies?_ in his jerked thumb and wiggling eyebrows. “Yeah. His ‘artistry.’ Sure, Cas.” He threw up sloppy scare quotes around ‘artistry’ and snorted for good measure. Castiel wasn’t sure how he managed to look so sassy in his Jungle Cruise getup—high-waisted shorts, khaki _everywhere_ , domed safari cap slung around his neck, and leopard print accents tying the whole thing together. He felt that same strange mix of shame and envy he got every time he remembered how unabashedly _good_ Gabriel was at his job.

Belle took a puff on her cigarette and blew out a smooth stream of smoke. “You don’t mean Dean, do you?” she said. “Sam’s brother?” She gestured high above her head. “Yea high?” She pantomimed tugging at the lapels of a jacket and splayed her legs out wide and bowed. “Kind of a douche?”

Castiel’s heartbeat picked up, and he said, as nonchalantly as possible, “Um. I couldn’t say. I only, uh, I don’t really know—”

“It must be Dean. I mean, he is pretty easy on the eyes,” Meg chimed in.

“Yeah, well, just don’t let Sam hear you’re lusting after his delicate flower of a brother,” Belle said, taking another drag. It made Castiel wish he’d never stubbed his out. “He’s all about staying in character. He’ll go Beast on your ass. Make you endure pointless trials and aggressively boring lectures to even watch him draw a stick figure.”

 “Ohh, now we have a name to put with the face!” Gabriel squealed. Castiel resisted the urge to tell Gabriel that he _knew_ this already, how could he not know? “Deeeean,” he drew it out long, speaking on a dreamy exhale. “So handsome.”

 “Yeah, that’s Dean. And I’m serious about his brother,” she said, hands raised in cautious warning. “There’s a reason they got him to play Beast. He’s just about got the temperament for it.” Another puff. “I should know.”

Castiel wondered if she meant that she would know because she was the Belle to Sam’s Beast or because there was some kind of history there. She certainly seemed less than fond of Dean, and some naïve little part inside of him thought _that can’t be right, he’s perfect._

“You know, Cas, for how opposed you are to the Disney spirit in general, this all seems pretty Disney-esque. _Gazing_ upon a princess—”

Belle cackled. “Don’t let _him_ hear you call him that!”

Gabriel graciously corrected himself, “Gazing upon a _prince_ from afar, too nervous to tell him your true feelings, and now the fierce defender of the prince’s maidenly virtue has appeared to provide the opposition.” Gabriel clutched dramatically at his shirt over his heart. Castiel was trying not-so-subtly to make his way out of the enclosure again, half a thought away from a panic attack. He could feel his heart picking up in his chest.

A man popped his head out the door; he was a man Castiel had seen before. His fine brown hair was pulled back into a sweeping ponytail and tied with a bow, and Castiel could see the sharp white of the ruffled dress shirt that lived under Prince Adam’s blue suit jacket. He wrinkled his nose and wafted his hand in front of his face to sweep away the smoke from Belle’s cigarette.

He looked supremely unintimidating, especially with the way his big brow furrowed in confusion when everyone in the alley, minus Castiel, burst out laughing in the face of his timely arrival.

“What’s so funny, Ruby?” he said, eyeing the Belle actress.

“Just—impeccable timing.”

“Well—I was just going to ask where we were supposed to patrol after lunch. I couldn’t remember the schedule and I’m about to go meet my brother.”

Ruby managed to get out about half a word before Gabriel completely cut her off.

Gabriel took Castiel by the shoulders and foisted him toward Sam, which made Sam open the door more fully and revealed where he was holding hands with a pretty pink Aurora, still decked out in her whole ensemble, gold crown sparkling on her head.

“As a matter of fact, my little bro here and I were just talking about your, uh.” Gabriel eyed Sam up and down. If he stood with the straightest of posture, he came to Sam’s mid-chest. “Little brother?” he hazarded, because even though Sam’s face was entirely unassuming, he was a little bit beast-like in stature. It gave a bit more credence to Belle’s insistence that he had a beastly temperament.

Belle snorted, and Sam looked puzzled, smiling a confused little half-smile. “Little brother?”

“Dean,” Belle said, stubbing out her cigarette with more force than was strictly necessary and eying the pretty blonde attached to Sam with a crinkled nose. “Angel face is interested in Dean’s ‘artistry.’” Meg and Gabriel laughed again, and Castiel flushed red, and Sam just kept right on looking baffled.

“Animation!” Castiel blurted. “I like animation. I saw his animation. I like it. That’s all.”

Sam’s face brightened. “Are you interested in it? The process, I mean. I’m pretty sure everyone here is to an extent but…Dean loves to talk about the process with folks. We were just about to grab some lunch, you wanna meet him?” He looked him up and down, like he was seeing him for the first time. “You work at Small World, huh?” he said knowingly.

Was Castiel interested in the process of animation? No. He was pretty interested into _Dean’s_ process of animation, but he was pretty sure, illusions of artistry aside, that was because of Dean. He’d never even seen most of the Disney library, and all the more recent bits, he’d seen in theaters _once_ because Gabriel used to drag him to the theater, used to sneak him in despite their mother and use his little brother’s clothes to hoard boxes and boxes of candy until he rattled when he walked in the door.

Castiel said, “No, no,” then, “Yes. Well. I do, but I don’t really want to. Uh.” He wasn’t sure when his peaceful lunch break had turned into a stressful interrogation. He was pretty content starting at Dean, avoiding his gaze every time he came to ride Small World. He never wanted to _meet_ him. Really meet him. That wasn’t for him. That wasn’t something he could have.

Gabriel shoved at him playfully, trying to push him toward Sam. But Castiel had finally lost his patience for the brotherly antics shtick, was done with him—with the _universe_ in _general—_ trying to convince him that he even had a chance with a man who was so far out of his league they weren’t even batting in the same state.

So when Gabriel tugged at him, Castiel _shoved_ back.

“I said no, Gabriel.” Gabriel looked a little affronted. Good. Castiel stormed past him, stormed past Sam at the door, stormed past the pretty Aurora still latched on to Sam’s big, beasty hand. Then he tossed, “I have work to get back to anyway,” over his shoulder.

And he must’ve looked positively thunderous returning to his Small World post thirty minutes early, because three of the seven dwarves covered their eyes as he raged past, and Snow White asked if he was alright in a warbly, falsetto voice.

* * *

There was a theater on Main Street with six little screens and it played black and white Disney classics on looping repeat all day. It was another attraction that Castiel never paid much attention to, but Gabriel had informed him via text message that he was to meet him here if he wanted a ride home at all, and Castiel might as well have thrown a temper tantrum at him this afternoon, so he obliged, stood on the platform in the middle of the circle of screens and watched the rippling round of “Steamboat Willie” encircling him.

“Well I’ll be damned,” came a familiar voice from behind him. “You’re not my brother.”

Castiel squinted as a shape solidified in the dark, and the broadness of the shoulders, the flipped-up collar, the bowed legs were all familiar.

“Dean.” He said the name aloud for the second time. It was just as satisfying coming off his tongue as it had been the first time. “Nor are you mine.”

“Hey,” he said. “You know my name. You guys musta been talkin’ about me.” They were alone in the theater, because tourists didn’t often have the patience to come in here unless it was hot out, and they certainly weren’t interested in the evening, when the sky was all set to crackle with fireworks, and there was some kind of epic battle happening down at the waterfront, like there was every night. It made it slightly less epic with each passing day, even though he himself had never sat down to watch the whole thing.

Castiel sputtered a response, because he was tempted to tell Dean that he himself had told him, via the old, too-small Mickey ears with a yellow-threaded _Dean_ , but something about it seemed invasive. More invasive than watching him from a window had been.

“That’s okay,” he responded to the sputtering. “I been talkin’ about you too, man.” He smiled. “Or at least my brother has. The two of ‘em blew me off at lunch. Pretty sure the little gossips were collaborating, right?”

“I. They were talking about. Us. What purpose could that possibly serve?”

Dean looked at him, shrugging his jacket in closer around him. The jacket made him look bigger, but when he put his hands in his pockets like that, Castiel could see that he was thinner, smaller than he probably wanted to appear.

“They were probably trying to move this shit along, because God knows we haven’t been able to.”

Castiel constructed his most carefully blank expression. “Move what along?” he said with dumb disbelief.

“Shit, dude. I love It’s a Small World. I do. Mary Blair was a badass lady. I say that completely unironically.” He raised his hands, palms out. A confession. “You think I love it three times a day, every day? Shit’s a fifteen minute ride.”

Castiel didn’t even feel like he was on the same conversational wavelength as Dean, so he said, “Who is Mary Blair?” instead of addressing any of the more pressing concerns he had.

Dean laughed, a happy sound that bubbled out of him. “She was an old Disney dame who didn’t take shit from anybody. She helped design Small World for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. She’s the reason the whole damn thing’s white on the outside and color vomit inside.” He looked wistfully in the direction of the Small World ride, and Castiel could practically see the way that its white and gold front lit so beautifully in the sunset playing out there on his face. Dean seemed to have such reverence for it, and Castiel couldn’t help but feel his heart— _swell_ a little in response, a swoon for Dean, and for Dean’s passion. Same as the swoon he felt when he watched him drawing, flicking between pages with a look of absolute, concentrated beauty.

“Oh,” he said, nodding absently until something else about what Dean had said struck him. “Three times a day?”

Dean rubbed at the back of his neck. “Took me a while to figure out your schedule.” He laughed again. He seemed to do that a lot. More than Castiel had in some time, just in this interaction alone. Gabriel laughed all the time too, but it had never struck him as a reminder like Dean’s laugh did. Dean’s laugh was like an item on a to-do list slowly manifesting before his eyes. “M’not the brightest bug in the bayou.” He knocked his temple once with his knuckles.

When Castiel couldn’t think of anything to say to that, Dean turned to one of the “Steamboat Willie” screens, looking at it like it fascinated him. Castiel wasn’t clear on the history of this particular piece, not exactly, but he knew that “Steamboat Willie” was very important to the Disney canon. Cas had seen it before, on these screens, when Gabriel had left him waiting for nearly an hour while he fucked Kali in one of the break rooms. But he’d never had occasion before that. He appreciated that it was a cultural artifact—he did. But Dean was _captivated_. He traced the lines with his eyes like he’d never seen them before, but based on the way he bobbed his head to all the right beats, muttered all the right nonsense, it was pretty obvious that he had.

He cut his eyes to Castiel’s again, catching him so by surprise that Castiel actually had the balls to look right at him.

Castiel _really_ wasn’t expecting him to say, “You ever seen _Beauty and the Beast_?”

Castiel said, “Uh…yes? I believe so. With Gabriel. My, uh, brother? I at least recognized your brother for who he was meant to be, so…” He stammered until he trailed off.

“You know, you ask _literally_ anyone else at the park right now if they’ve seen that movie, you’re gonna get nothing but starin’ disbelief. ‘Of course I’ve seen _Beauty and the Beast,_ ’” he mocked in a high-pitched voice, affronted fingertips delicate at the base of his throat. “‘Do you think I’m some kind of heathen?! That’s classic Renaissance!’”

Castiel said, “Renaissance?”

Dean laughed. Again. “Nevermind that, man. Anyway—um. D’you remember Lumiere and Cogsworth? The, uh. The candlestick and the clock. They invite Maurice—Belle’s dad—into the castle. And then when Belle comes around, they sing the song—” he hummed two lilting, repetitive bars under his breath. “Hm-hm-hmmm. Hm-hm-hmmm. You know. They set ‘em up. I’m just thinkin’ that your brother kinda reminds me of Lumiere. He seems like a man who’s lighting up a feather duster every coupla days, if you know what I’m sayin’.” He grinned at his own joke. Castiel vaguely remembered the feather duster being flirtatious.

Castiel said, “My brother is slightly promiscuous, yes.”

“Right!” he snapped. “And my brother thinks he’s a beast, and I think they keep him around because he’s the only one that fits into that stupid, massive head with his giant Cro-Magnon skull of his, but he’s such a little nerd. He’s got way more Cogsworth than Beast in ‘im.” Dean sighed like that settled it, returning to look at the screen where Mickey Mouse was stuffing a cow full of a big mound of hay, trying to fit it into a harness. He waited for Dean to continue, but Dean seemed content with where the train of thought had ended.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.”

He didn’t look away from the screen. “Lemme put it another way, ‘cause I get the sense that you don’t watch a lot of Disney movies, man. Like, kids’ movies, a lot of the time they got these sidekicks, and it’s usually their job to help the prince and princess get together. I mean, the universe was doing a good job of Disney romancing us, but then our brothers straight-up _Tale As Old As Time_ d us. I mean, in the movie, Belle comes into the castle, there’s some singing and dancing, a little bit of Stockholm Syndrome later, and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, you got yourself a wedding.”

“You’re saying our brothers are trying to…marry us off.”

“Whoa, man. Slow your roll there. How about, uh, go on a date?”

“Trying to get us to go on a date, then.”

“Not just trying. Trying implies there’s some, uh, piece of him that’s less than determined for me to romance you. I mean, my brother is a little less enthusiastic about it. He’s Cogsworth for a reason. He drags his feet all over the place. I think he just wants me to make friends. Either way, there’s no denying the chemistry. And my brother sent me here to meet you, and here I am.”

Castiel couldn’t fathom how Dean wasn’t swimming in friends just as he was, how he wasn’t knee-deep in women. Couldn’t fathom why he hadn’t just turned around when he saw that his brother had set him up. As Castiel watched, Dean absently ran his knuckles hard over his sternum, massaging in a motion that seemed ingrained in him, repetitive.

“I see,” Castiel said. “Have you seen _The Little Mermaid_?”

Dean turned, smiling. The black and white of “Steamboat Willie” made the lines in his face pop, more than there maybe should be for how old his personality painted him.

“Yes, Cas,” Dean said, and Castiel wondered if maybe Dean remembered _his_ hat, and that was the reason he knew. Obviously Gabriel had been putting his nose where it didn’t belong, so it could have come from anywhere. He didn’t get his hopes up. “It’s a Renaissance classic. I’ve seen it.”

Cas felt his nostrils flare, frustrated. “I don’t know what that _means_. But either way, you should know that my brother is more—more of the seagull from _The Little Mermaid_.”

This time, Dean’s laugh seemed to surprise him, bursting out of him without his consent. “Scuttle?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Scuttle, Scuttle. He’s the dorky seagull. That’s his name.”

“Oh.” Castiel blinked. “Yes. Him. The one that fails, for all intents and purposes, to salvage the prince and princess’s relationship. The one that presumes to know what he is talking about, but very much does _not_.” Behind Dean’s head, Mickey Mouse played a cow’s teeth like a xylophone. “Regardless of what he said to you, Dean, my brother does not know me, and he does not know what I want.” Castiel looked intently at the screen over Dean’s shoulder, focusing just past the hard line of his jaw.

“I think that makes my brother Flounder.”

Against his best judgment, Castiel’s eyes flicked back to Dean. “The…fish?”

“Yeah. Little yellow guy with the blue stripes.” Dean used the flat of his hand to trace horizontal stripes along his own back in demonstration.

“…That’s a little beside the point.”

Dean ignored him. “I guess that makes sense. Flounder was kinda a nerd, too. And y’know, Scuttle kinda saves the day in the end. He’s a little bit badass, late to the party, dive-bombing all over the place.”

“Dean.”

“What about _Pocahontas_? You seen _Pocahontas_?” Cas shook his head. “Bummer. There’s this uh—raccoon. Meeko. And this hummingbird. Your brother strikes me as the raccoon. He seems a little bit manic like that. And that makes my brother the uptight hummingbird, which makes sense. Oh!” He snapped his fingers again, a realization. Castiel startled. “Or he could be Percy. There’s this fuckin’ pug dog that’s spoiled as shit, and there’s this one scene where he’s like, kickin’ back in the bath, and I just,” he cackled. “I can see Sammy.”

“ _Dean_ —”

“Or, uh, geez—you ever seen _Aladdin_?” He didn’t stop to find out if Cas had ever seen _Aladdin_ , almost couldn’t seem to stop talking. If Castiel weren’t so certain that Dean was the most beautiful and confident man he’d ever seen, he’d guess that Dean was _nervous_. “Gabriel seems like a flying carpet man, which makes Sammy Abu, which makes some sense too. Unless he’s the prissy tiger in the palace, which I can see. Always gotta make sure Sammy’s taken care of just _so_.” He ran a hand over his mouth and looked up at Cas through his lashes, a little contrite, like he knew he was rambling. Behind Dean, the cartoon concluded in a splash of sound, Mickey peeling potatoes in the storeroom of the ship. He always forgot it ended that way. It was a little bit bleak for something as canonical as “Steamboat Willie” was.

“You keep—trying to implicate us into fairytale romances. It’s more than a little baffling. This is the first time I’ve even spoken to you. It’s a little presumptuous to assume that I’m interested in you, or even in men at all.” The cartoon immediately restarted, the tinny sound filling the little theater.

“Ah—gabby brothers, remember?” He’d been smiling, but his smile faltered a bit as the iconic whistling piped into the room. “Besides, I seriously can’t be wrong about the at-first-sight vibes I was gettin’ out of us, can I? I’ve seen your look on enough princesses to know what it looks like by now, right?”

It was an innocent enough comment, but Castiel had had enough feminizing nicknames thrown his way to last a lifetime. Dean said princess, and Castiel was in high school again, when even Gabe called him things like “angelface” and the whole football team called him “fairy,” even though he didn’t really figure it out, didn’t even sleep with another man at all, until nearly a full year after he graduated.

People were presumptuous like that.

“I’m not the fucking princess,” he snapped. Dean didn’t flinch.

“Okay dude,” he said, all calm supplication. “I’ll be the princess. You be the prince.”

And that was one of the most baffling things in the veritable sea of baffling things that Castiel had heard from Dean’s mouth. Pete appeared on screen again. They were getting to the part where Dean had entered before, Mickey on the dock with the cow.

“Neither of us is—” He bit his lip. “Dean, this isn’t some movie you can cast. This isn’t a fantasy at all. In case you didn’t notice, Disney doesn’t _have_ happy couples like us. There’s no love-at-first-sights for us, no fairytale romances for us, and there’s certainly no happily-ever-afters.”

There was a long moment of pause. Dean put his hands in his pockets again, made himself small. Pete cackled on screen, big and deep and cracked with the static of poor sound quality.

His face was a little bit red when he spoke. “Well okay, dude, for one, I’m asking you out for like…ice cream at Gibson Girl, not making a marriage proposal, in case that wasn’t clear. For another uh, are you watching what’s happening behind my head?” He threw his head back in the direction of the screen behind him. “That couple? Those are cartoon mice. I realize they’re not like us, but I got my limits, Cas.”

Castiel puffed himself up, made himself bigger than he felt. “You know what I mean.”

“Not sure I do.” Dean rubbed at the back of his head. Castiel had flashbacks to outing himself to his parents, the blank looks on their faces when he’d told them he had a boyfriend, like they couldn’t fathom what on earth he was talking about. He’d had to spell it out to them in the most explicit and rudimentary terms in order to make them understand well enough to stop paying his college tuition.

“Disney doesn’t exactly put homosexual couples on display in their films, Dean.”

“Big whup,” Dean said without pause, blood rising in his face as Minnie Mouse appeared behind his head, shouting for the boat to wait up. She squeaked _yoohoo,_ and her feet made tinkling little pitter-patters on the grass. “Big fuckin’ whup. I—you gotta hear this every night workin’ here. But you know, you know ‘When You Wish Upon a Star?’ The _second line_ is about it makin’ no difference who you are. You like dick, but _anything your heart desires_ could still come to you.” Castiel did hear that song at least five times a day. He could hear the familiar cadence in the lines as Dean spoke them. The part about dick was new, though.

“I’m fairly certain that homosexual relationships were not what the original composer intended to encourage.”

“Who gives a fuck. There was a black princess a little while ago—you think he was lookin’ out for her? Redefining every day, dude. Buildin’ on, makin’ better. That’s what Walt was all about.”

Castiel scrutinized him for a long moment and realized that the reason he was so surprised by this man buying so wholly and so completely into the Disney magic illusion was that he had truly never imagined that they would reach a point in which they spoke to one another. His image of this man was crafted from his own voice—just like his strange, Korean church services—and Castiel’s voice didn’t really like him very much. It was the same reason he was mystified that Dean was speaking to Castiel at all.

“I can’t believe you buy into all this,” he said, waving his hand vaguely at the opulent little theater, to the screen where Mickey was busy playing a cow’s teeth like a xylophone for the second time. But it was also broader, a more all-encompassing gesture, to the people outside, to the little rides in Fantasyland and the hyperbolized vision of world peace in Small World, to the actor or actress that was risking their neck to fly to the top of the Sleeping Beauty castle each night as Tinkerbell, to the perfectly cobbled streets and the perfectly costumed characters, to the rides that moved thousands of people every goddamn day. To all this. To everything.

“I’m not, like. A religious man,” Dean said, kicking at the carpet. “I don’t believe in all that much. But you gotta believe that you can change things. That things are gonna get better. Disney—Disney does. There’s no buying into anything, ‘cause it’s just _real_.”

In _Aladdin_ , there was a scene where the titular character reached for his princess and said _do you trust me_ , hand extended. Castiel chafed at the self-imposed implication that he was that princess, riding shotgun on a magic carpet somewhere and getting some secondhand look at a _whole new world_ , but at the same time, did he trust Dean?

Yes. Too much. So much it scared him.

“I’m really not sure I believe you.”

“That’s okay,” Dean said, smiling. “I’ll show you. You wanna get an ice cream cone?”

He was asking for an ice cream cone. It was true, he wasn’t asking for a commitment, or his hand in marriage. He wasn’t asking him to fall in love, and if this failed, if it turned out that Dean hated him and never wanted to see his stupid face again, Castiel could return to his comfortable status quo unfazed. So he nodded.

“Okay.” He tried not to think of Princess Jasmine taking Aladdin’s hand.


	2. Chapter 2

 

At the apartment, when Gabriel heard that he’d actually accepted the date, he said, “You do know this means you actually have to _go out,_ don’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you leave the house for anything besides work or weird Korean church in…uh. How long since you moved in?”

Castiel rolled his eyes. “Two years, Gabriel.”

Gabriel snapped his fingers. “That long.” When he realized what he’d said, he actually managed to seem a little put out about it. “Yeesh, has it really been that long?” He looked around his one bedroom apartment, to the suitcase where Castiel still kept all his clothing, neatly folded, against the wall by Gabriel’s entertainment center. “We should get you a bed or something.” He rubbed the back of his head.

“It’s only temporary,” Castiel mumbled half-heartedly, looking at his stack of feathers against the wall, some of the only personal effects he’d garnered since he moved in. He also had his laptop—almost five years old now—and some toiletries in the bathroom. He had a mug in Gabriel’s kitchen that he used every morning for coffee and washed religiously afterward. He’d made _some_ kind of impression here. He had.

He kicked a dirty sock on the floor, hoping it was his. When it flipped over, it had little rainbow-colored flecks of confetti stitched into its pattern. Gabriel’s, then.

“I hate to break it to you kiddo, but that’s what you said, uh—apparently two years ago, now.”

“Why are you so concerned with me having a bed _now_? You don’t imagine that I’m bringing him back to sit around your apartment in his pajamas with me, do you? Is that what you were hoping for when you threw me into that shark pit with him?”

“Aw, you know I’m always hoping my baby bro’s gonna get some tail. I happen to know you’re in the middle of a two year dry spell. Excluding alone time—”

“ _Gabriel_.”

“—which I’m not sure counts, despite whatever pizza delivery bullshit you had on your laptop the last time I came home early.” Kali had been with him. It wasn’t really something that he wanted to think about ever again. “Listen. I just. You realize that the reason I talked to his brother was because I want you to be happy, right? You deserve something nice. You do.” Gabriel’s face was more or less permanently fixed in some kind of a smirk, so it was a little miraculous when he lost the bow in his mouth in favor of a serious frown. When he furrowed his brows like that, he could actually see the family resemblance.

Embarrassed and not entirely sure he was in agreement, he mumbled, “Maybe.” He fidgeted with his hands.

“Good.” He was smiling again. “That means we can get you a bed to fuck your new little boyfriend on.”

“I’ve hardly _spoken_ with him.” Gabriel ignored him.

“I’m thinking we can make some kind of mural out of your pilfered feather collection, too. It’ll be homey in here.”

For the rest of the night, Gabriel talked about rearranging the living room, putting up curtains, maybe even upsizing to a two-bedroom apartment in a cheaper complex. Castiel spent the rest of the evening trying to ignore the claustrophobic panic rising in his chest at the prospect of making a situation that he wasn’t necessarily happy with any more permanent than it had to be. He’d dissuade Gabriel somehow. He just needed a little more time to find the job, the apartment, the situation, that was just—just exactly right.

* * *

Dean came off the page like one of the figures he animated. In the little nook where he drew, he was like a snapshot, a single frame. But suddenly when he was here eating ice cream in front of Castiel, chasing creamy trails of it where it leaked over his fingers, it was like someone had flicked the pages. He was even more beautiful than he’d been before. It was hardly even fair.

Castiel stared, concentrating very hard. He got the sense that maybe he had spent a _long_ time staring at him today, because Dean was smirking a little as he stared back.

“I think about half your mint chocolate chip is running down your arm,” he said. Castiel startled, looking down to where his forgotten ice cream cone was, in fact, leaving slimy green trails down his forearm and dripping onto his slacks. “You know, there’s not a window between us anymore. We can carry on a conversation now.” Castiel grabbed a wad of napkins from the dispenser on their table and sopped at the mess on his pants. He moved on to try to make some headway with the cascade down his arm, but it was a losing battle. The more he tried to clean, the more it melted and dripped from the bottom of the cone.

“Fuck,” he swore loudly, emphatically. He dumped the whole sodden mess in a nearby trash can in frustration. Dean just watched the whole show, amused little smirk playing over his lips. He kept up with his butter pecan cone just fine despite the fact that his eyes were trained on Castiel’s just as firmly as Castiel’s had been trained on him.

“You shouldn’t swear quite so loud around the kiddos,” Dean said, nodding just a little beyond the fenced enclosure where they were eating to where two little girls with tight hair buns and princess dresses were gushing at a petite, sweet-faced Alice sandwiched between a Mad Hatter and a March Hare.

“That’s my friend Jo,” Dean said. “And she may look like a little waif and talk like a British street urchin, but she’ll kick your A-S-S if she has to.”

Castiel looked back toward the Alice to find her glaring above the heads of the crowd, looking right at him, managing a very imposing expression—which was quite impressive, given that she was only a few inches taller than the tallest child standing in line to see her. How on earth did she _know?_

Dean laughed. “She has a sixth sense,” he said knowingly. “I spent a big part of my childhood getting kicked around by her, so I know what not to say when she’s around by now.” He waved at her, waggling each finger one by one, then pantomimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key. She hurtled one last devastating look of warning before she went back to signing autographs, little smile reinstating itself on her face.

He looked back to Dean to find him holding his own ice cream cone out to Castiel, fingers that he had licked looking a little slick and shiny. Castiel could see where the rough grooves in his tongue had made tiny tracks in the ice cream’s surface.

“We can share mine,” Dean said, waggling it little bit when Cas didn’t move. “C’mon, I know it’s sugar free, but you can’t let that throw you. I swear everything at Gibson Girls is good.”

Castiel bit his lip and looked around. “And here you were telling me not to _swear_.”

Dean drew his arm back, brow furrowed.

“What?” he said. He absently laid into the ice cream cone with his tongue, digging out a pecan to crunch on.

Castiel, very pointedly not gawping, crossed his arms and drew back into his seat. “You were just telling me to be wary of the way I behave around children, and yet you’re wholly intent on—on inappropriate public displays of affection.”

When Dean spoke next, it was slowly and carefully, as if Castiel was a child himself.

“Are you seriously like—comparing dropping the F-bomb to sharing an ice cream cone with me?”

“Not with you—in particular.”

“With. Another dude,” Dean said with flat realization, face falling. He was finally losing track of his own ice cream cone, trails of tan leaking disconsolately down his fingers. He licked his hand once or twice, without any real feeling, but it trailed down his arm regardless, disappearing alongside a pale blue vein into the arm of his leather jacket. “Dude, there’s a couple over there that’s been licking on the same spoon for about a half-hour like twenty feet away from the meet-‘n-greet with Mary Poppins.” He pointed to where a quick-footed woman in a poofy white dress was skipping cobblestones hand in hand with a little boy, and then to an extremely tan woman in a barely-there top who was swapping more saliva than ice cream with her well-muscled male companion.

Castiel didn’t know how to get across that it was different when they did it. Mostly because it wasn’t logical or reasonable and he was aware of that. He drew himself up, gathering the courage to take a bite of the ice cream still hovering in front of his face, when suddenly it was closer, wiggling impatiently.

“Take it,” Dean said, no room for argument. Castiel did, following Dean’s eyes as it swapped hands.

There was a little boy who had plopped onto the curb a few feet away, sobbing miserably into his hands. Above his head, a Mickey-shaped balloon floated serenely into the sky high, high above them, quickly becoming little more than a blot in the searing sun. Dean approached the kid from behind, casting vaguely from side to side, probably looking for his parents. When no one caught his eye, he lowered himself to sit on the curb beside the kid, knuckling at his sternum all the while.

Castiel couldn’t hear whatever words were exchanged between them, but they made an interesting picture. Dean with his broad back, hunched to be smaller so he could look into the child’s face. Dean moved his arms charismatically, gesturing left and right, waving at a big double-decker bus as it chugged slowly down the street, parting the milling crowds of park goers that occasionally interrupted Castiel’s line of sight.

Eventually, Dean turned around, smiling big. He waved Cas over, and Cas rose to his feet. “Cas! We’re invoking ‘No Sad Child!’ Look alive!” Castiel knew about “No Sad Child,” of course. He had to. It meant finding a replacement on the house if a child lost something or dropped something or ruined something. Gabriel had called it ‘courtesy’ when he’s described the rule to Castiel, but they both knew what it would have been called in their household—pandering. Spoiling. Going soft. Their parents had prepared them to accept the ills of life as they came, so it made Castiel more than a little bit bitter to see kids just—getting whatever they wanted. Without question. Why the hell should he have to get a little girl a new lollipop when she was the one who had dumped it over the edge of the ride in the first place?

Somehow, it became his job to sit with the little boy while Dean set off like a man on a mission to find another balloon vendor. “He says his mom just took off for the bathroom,” Dean said, bobbing his head toward the restroom doors a little ways down the avenue. “Doesn’t sound like he’s got anyone else with him. You stay.”

It was a little silly how willing he was to obey Dean’s barked command, but oh _was he_. So he sat down beside the boy and tried to ignore the funny looks from the people around them.

Castiel cleared his throat, absently licked at the ice cream in his hand, and found himself surprised when it was butter pecan and not mint chocolate chip. It only served to remind him that he wished Dean would hurry his ass back here. The little boy sniffed dismally, like losing his balloon was the worst thing that could happen to him, as if he couldn’t conceive of a worse fate. Castiel didn’t want to see this kid in about a day when the stupid thing started to lose helium and slither to the ground. He wanted to say as much, wanted to pound in how temporary the stupid thing was, but it didn’t really seem like Dean would appreciate that very much.

Instead, he said, “What’s your name?” in a rusty voice and took another bite of ice cream like it would soothe his stubborn throat.

He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much what Dean would appreciate.

“Jesse,” he said, rubbing hard at his eyes. His face was a picture of tortured misery. Castiel didn’t really know where to go from there. That was as far as he usually got in his interactions with children. He tried to imagine what Garth would do, what Gabriel would. But they were cleverer than he was—at the very least, they were definitely funnier.

Where was Dean? He took another bite of Dean’s ice cream cone and found the sugar-free flavor to be cloyingly, overwhelmingly sweet. Like melty aspartame. He put the sodden cone down beside him, sparing half a thought for the janitors that would have to mop at the puddle it left later on as he watched people step pointedly around it.

“I’m Castiel,” Cas said, for lack of anything better to say. Jesse side-eyed him.

“That’s a weird name.” Castiel puffed up.

“What makes Jesse so very normal?” Cas bit back petulantly. Jesse tipped his head to the side, seemed to be really considering that. While he thought, he picked at a big, thready hole in the top of one of his sneakers, which prompted Castiel to really take him in in his entirety, from the frayed ends of his jeans to the tattered windbreaker tied around his waist. His shirt, a simple gray Disneyland shirt with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy printed across the front was so new that it still had starched, crisp creases in the sleeves from where it had been folded in the store. It seemed to be the only piece of clothing on him that didn’t have a hole in it.

“I guess you’re right about that,” Jesse said. “I’d never met anyone named Dean before either, but that feels more normal for some reason. Maybe ‘cause I’ve heard it before. But only as a last name.” He shrugged. “Is Dean your friend?”

Castiel hesitated. Dean treated him like they’d known each other for years. He laughed a lot, he smiled a lot, he made jokes. Today was only the second time they’d really spoken. Quietly, pathetically, Castiel felt like they were.

“Sort of,” he decided on.

Jesse wrinkled his nose. He’d clearly been expecting a cut and dried _yes_ or _no_.

“He’s nice,” Jesse said, affronted, like Castiel was conflicted on the matter and needed to be swayed in either direction.

Castiel said, “He is.”

“Do you work here like Dean does?”

“I do,” Castiel said, looking down at his feet, chafing the soles of his own shoes together on top of the cobbled road. They both took a moment to watch as a cart drawn by two horses clopped its way down the street in front of them. The horses were beautiful and well-groomed, and Castiel was thankful that _that_ , at least, wasn’t his job. Cleaning up after those beasts.

When Jesse spoke next, it was so quiet that Castiel almost didn’t hear him. “You’re lucky,” he said. “You get to be here _every day_.”

Castiel was about to argue that point when Dean appeared. It was clear he’d jogged to find the vendor, but there was no trace of the healthy, exerted pink in his cheeks. That was the first thing he noticed. The second was that he had five balloons—red, green, blue, yellow, purple—which was more than he had probably set out to get. His hand was bloodless where in clenched tight around the cords. He was clearly not letting them go again.

When Dean spoke, he was a little bit breathless. “I didn’t know what color you lost,” he said. “So I got pretty much all of ’em.”

Jesse’s eyes lit up, and the tears seemed to be forgotten. In their place was a happiness Castiel had seen before, a happiness he saw every day, just generally not directed at him. This time, just a fraction of the thousand kilowatt smile was on him, and it was a little overwhelming, just that.

“It was red,” Jesse said. “But, uh, I like green, too,” he added slyly. Dean smiled.

“Here, Cas.” He gently extricated the red balloon from the bunch, tipping his head back and looking up, up, up to determine which string went where. When he found it, he gave Cas the other four, and Cas latched on with grim determination, fingers going just as tight as Dean’s had been around the precious parcels. This, at the very least, he would do correctly.

When Cas had a firm hold, Dean lowered himself to one knee in front of the kid, knuckling at his sternum absently with his non-balloon hand.

“Alright, kid,” he said. “Which one is your red hand?”

Jesse looked down at his open palms for a moment before eventually deciding that his left hand was the red one. He extended it to Dean, all open trust, his little hand curled into a sticky fist. Dean’s fingers were something Castiel had fixated on for a long while, something that he had imagined in many varied situations. But he had never conceived of them in a situation such as this—tying a simple knot to keep a little boy tethered to a red Mickey Mouse balloon. His hands were not delicate by any means. He clearly worked with them; the right especially was heavy and calloused. The nails were square and close-cut, rough like they’d been bitten instead of clipped. But they were nothing but gentle as they pulled the string tight enough to hold, not tight enough to pinch.

“Cas, I need the green now,” he said, curling and uncurling his hand in a _gimme_ gesture. Castiel managed to find the green balloon and separate it without losing the others, and Dean tied the green balloon to Jesse’s right wrist with the same overwhelming delicacy.

“No losing those suckers, now,” Dean said, smiling brightly. Jesse smiled right back, and it was as if the tears had never been there at all, completely miraculous. “Now you oughta go on Big Thunder and laugh when they whack the saps behind you in the face.” Dean bopped the green balloon, and it sailed lightly through the air until it smacked Castiel in the nose with a resonating _bwomp_.

Jesse laughed, and Dean smiled toothily up at him, far too satisfied. Castiel squinted.

“What are you gonna do with the others?” Jesse asked, indicating his wrists, open face clearly pondering the baffling impossibility of their situation—his wrists were clearly at capacity. Dean got both his feet under him again so he could sit on his haunches and tilt his head to look up at Jesse.

“Hmmm,” he said, all exaggerated curiosity. “What do you think Cas’s favorite color is?”

Castiel went red, eyeing the purple balloon warily. “We could always just—set them free,” Castiel suggested.

Jesse replied to Dean as if he hadn’t spoken. “His eyes are real blue,” he said, squinting right up into Castiel’s face, right up into his eyes. Dean did the same, his eyes soft and considering. “I reckon he probly likes blue.” That was a relief at least. He didn’t necessarily relish the idea of being tethered to a balloon all day, but at least blue was a pretty unobjectionable color.

Wordlessly, Dean rose to his full height and took the balloons from him to pass them off to Jesse. Jesse was of the same mind as they were, holding tight to the balloons because he had already witnessed the devastating results of seeing one get whisked away. Jesse, however, looked about ready to float away himself now that he was holding all five. He was so thin that Castiel had half a mind to feed him a good meal at the staff canteen and no idea where that impulse had even emerged from.

Dean stripped out the blue balloon, carefully winding it around the balloons that were already attached to the boy. Dean did not wait for Castiel to select his own “blue wrist” like he had with Jesse. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around Castiel’s forearm himself, gently chafing the veins in his wrist as he lifted his hand. Jesse faded to a splotch of bobbing color in his periphery as Dean looked up from his wrist, straight into his eyes, then to the balloon and back again.

“Nowhere near the same blue,” Dean said softly. “But it’ll do.” Castiel wanted to say that no, he was wrong, the color must be the same because Castiel felt like the balloon himself, high, head full of helium and buoying along somewhere above their heads. He felt giddy until Dean finished and left him feeling lighter.

Jesse’s mother found them after they had turned the tables on Dean and were attempting to tie the remaining balloons on his arms with anything approaching his practiced dexterity—Castiel on his right arm with the purple balloon and the kid on his left with the yellow.

If Jesse was thin, his mother was downright gaunt. She had deep, dark bags under her eyes, and even though she smiled to see her son, it was quivery at the corners. She waved an uncertain little wave at the three of them, and Jesse smiled brightly back, waving with his free hand. Her steps were timid and unsure in the face of a pushy crowd, and as she shuffled her way over to them, she tripped into a red-faced tourist with big camera around his neck, and she was too small to serve much of an opposition when he carelessly pushed her away. She might’ve gone sprawling onto the cobblestones had it not been for Jesse, who immediately abandoned his mission at Dean’s wrist to serve as his mother’s crutch. Dean made a one-armed grab for the yellow balloon, but it was already too late, and they both watched silently as it ascended, a little twin sun to match the one already dominating the noon sky above them.

When they looked back down, Jesse’s mother was plucking delicately at the balloon strings tethered to her son’s wrists.

“You got a new balloon,” she said reverently. “Two. How?” Jesse just pointed at Dean and Cas, and Castiel tied off the purple balloon’s string around Dean’s wrist just in time for her to find his hand with bony fingers and shake, the balloon bobbing comically between them. “Thank you,” she said, all earnest smiles.

Dean smiled back, kept shaking with her until long after propriety demanded, until long after Jesse had lost interest, looking instead at the distant yellow dot still visible above them.

“S’just my job,” Dean said. She pinched his cheek.

“Sorry I lost the other one, Dean,” Jesse said. He flapped his arms up and down. “I’m real glad you tied these on.”

Dean waved his hand dismissively, and the balloon swooshed through the air between them.

“Five balloons was a little bit excessive, even between the three of us. Yellow dude can meet up with your old red one. They can be free to have a life together, now.” He jabbed Cas in the ribs with his elbow and said, “Where do you think the orange balloons come from, huh?”

The laugh bubbled out of Cas unexpectedly. A surprise. The joke was so unassumingly stupid, so ridiculous, he found he couldn’t quite help it. Plus, Jesse looked so happy and his mother looked so happy and it carved new grooves into their faces in a way that suggested that they didn’t look that way so often. Castiel knew, because the laugh pulled at his own face in hard, unfamiliar ways.

You wouldn’t have known that this was an uncommon occurrence looking at Dean, though. He smiled as Cas like he lived to make him laugh, like this was something he did all the time and something he genuinely relished the prospect of doing again. It made Castiel feel warm.

Jesse, clasped tight to his mom’s hand now, tilted his head at Dean.

“Is Cas your friend?” he said. Dean tipped his head right back.

“Of course,” he said easily. Jesse gave Castiel a very, very pointed look. “Was that a question?”

“See,” Jesse said. “I told you.”

“Aww,” said Dean. “Cas was doubtin’ me? Cut to the _quick_.”

“Not. Not you,” Castiel said, biting down on what he wanted to say. Not you. Never you. Myself. I doubt you could ever _really_ like someone like me. And that wasn’t necessarily unfounded. They’d hardly spoken. There was no such thing as the special, instant magnetism that attracted Disney characters in real life. Absolutely no such thing. “I just,” he mumbled, for lack of anything better. “I don’t know.”

“That’s okay man,” he said. “Like I said before. I’m gonna show you.”

They waved goodbye to Jesse and his mother, just another face in the thousands of faces they saw every day, regardless of what he saw in them and what quiet tragedies he thought he might have gleaned. They watched them go for a long while, until they were just a pair of red and green balloons bobbing above the heads of the crowd. Cas could feel the frown on his face after the unfamiliar smile of a few moments ago, and it seemed as if he was aware of it for the first time in months. Up until that moment, it was always something that just _was_.

When Cas looked over at Dean, Dean was already looking at him with that same unfathomable softness he’d had in his eyes all day. When they hadn’t been paying attention, a soft breeze had come up, and the balloons tied to their wrists, purple and blue, had kissed and curled up against one another, their strings melded into one singular entity. Cas reached out to pry them apart again.

“I’m invoking No Sad Cas, now,” Dean said, turning abruptly to lead him back to Gibson Girl by his captive balloon. “All sad Cases get more mint chocolate chip.”

Castiel walked behind him but continued fiddling with the balloon strings, working not-so-nimble fingers into the spaces between the strings only to have the balloons tango and twirl their way back into some kind of incomprehensible knot.

“Why? It’s my own fault the first one melted.”

Dean shrugged in the doorway to the ice cream parlor, facing the long line of people for the second time in less than an hour. It still smelled heavenly, vanilla and sugary waffle cones and deep, rippling undercurrents of fudge cut with sharp tangy cherries.

“You deserve it, dude.”

Castiel wasn’t so sure he believed him, but this cone he actually managed to get down without incident—quiet now next to Dean, with purple and blue balloons so twined together, no passerby would ever be able to tell whose was whose.

* * *

Dean decided he needed to ease him in slow, like he was some sort of blushing Disneyland virgin in need of deflowering. Apparently, starting slow on the magic meant that there wouldn’t be any magic at all.

“Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln is hardly an attraction at all,” said Castiel as they worked their way down Main Street, dragging his feet every step. “More like a glorified history lesson.”

“You’re kidding right?” Dean was content to reduce his speed for the sake of walking alongside him, and he even managed to make it look casual and lackadaisical instead of slow and sullen. Goodness, he was gorgeous. “Lincoln was one of the greatest motherfuckin’ badasses of the last couple centuries—when was the last time you saw a dead badass come to life, dude?”

He’d seen pictures of the animatronics, and they looked like just that—he didn’t imagine that dated technology from the 1950s could look any more real, any more lifelike, than the mechanical clown mascots at the stupid themed pizza place down the road.

“You’ve been wrong before, you big baby,” Dean said, patting him on the back, then reaching up to run his knuckles over his sternum with a near-indiscernible wince. His nervous tic.

“Not a baby,” Castiel said sullenly.

At the entrance to Mr. Lincoln, there was a child, perhaps ten years old, tugging on his mother’s arms and wailing about how much he would rather be riding the Indiana Jones ride again. The mother looked exhausted, like the last thing she wanted was to wait in another two-hour queue. He knew that people often came to Mr. Lincoln when it got too hot, when they got tired.

Dean gave him a very pointed look, smile tugging up one corner of his mouth. “You see that? You know who whines?” He looked earnestly into Castiel’s eyes and put a hand on his shoulder. “ _Babies._ ”

“Shut up,” he said, pushing Dean’s hand off and rushing ahead of Dean into the coolness of the lobby, where pictures lined the wall, facts on placards making the whole thing look like a museum rather than an amusement park. Castiel shuffled in discomfort.

The doors to the show auditorium were closed still, so they circled the lobby, taking in the historical Disney artifacts, relics of the park’s history. A mechanical parrot. An early model of the park. Dean took it all in reverently, pride visibly swelling his chest. Every once in a while, he’d spout another fact.

“That’s the actual bench where Disney dreamed up the park,” Dean said, pointing toward a weathered green bench near the entrance. “He’d take his little girls to ride this carousel, and he was like, you know, this is awesome, I need a whole fuckin’ park like this. Must’ve been hilarious when some random people showed up at that park and were like, ‘uh, could we get that bench, guys?’” He snickered at his own joke, but he cut himself off when he stopped suddenly, just in front of a big wall of photographs.

His eyes locked on one in particular—almost automatic—with a completely concentrated expression pulled the smile from his face. The photograph looked like it had come from the 1970s, a Vaseline-blurred image of a beautiful blonde woman dressed as the Blue Fairy, with long, flowing sleeves, sparkling blue fabric, wand poised as if to cast some magic spell. After a moment staring at her, Castiel realized why she looked so familiar. Her face was the spitting image of the Blue Fairy that Dean had been drawing the very first night Castiel had seen him.

Castiel hummed when the silence went on a bit too long, because he felt as if he wasn’t involved in whatever silent exchange Dean was having. It was just Dean and the photograph.

He cleared his throat. “I was hoping this lobby would be more Lincoln-oriented so that I could teach you a thing or two for once.”

Dean took a moment to pull his eyes away from the photograph. His smile was distant for a moment before he seemed to come all the way back to himself. “You a history buff, dude?” he said absently. Castiel didn’t even have a chance to respond before his attention was on a bench near one edge of the lobby where the little boy who had been throwing the fit outside was crying miserably in front of an old Donald Duck cartoon. His mother and father perused the periphery of the lobby, pointedly ignoring their son. Dean waltzed over and took a seat next to him. When he’d sat down, he cast about for something as he drew a fat pen out of the inner pocket in his leather jacket.

Castiel just watched him until he remembered that Dean had asked him a question and said, “To an extent. I enjoyed studying history in school. I took several courses when I was in college just for fun.” Dean had found a Disneyland map discarded on the floor, and he set about drawing in the middle of it with his thick pen. Castiel watched a little form beginning to take shape right over Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

“No kidding,” Dean said, flicking his eyes up to the little boy’s face. The boy looked a little less upset now, sniffing disconsolately but no longer shedding big crocodile tears, too curious to concentrate on the abject unfairness of the world any longer. “You were in school? What’d you study?”

This was unbroken ground in Castiel’s life since he’d moved to California. Sometimes, Gabriel tried to talk to him about enrolling in community college or wanted to talk to him about helping out with tuition checks or retrieving transcripts. Castiel didn’t want to look at his transcripts. He’d dropped out halfway through a semester, and he hadn’t even done it the proper way. He’d just packed his shit and taken off, and he’d failed, undoubtedly, every single one of his classes. The semester before that, his attentions had been waning, half-hearted at best, and he hadn’t done as well as he could have there either, not by a longshot.

“Finances. I was—uh. Accounting. I was to be an accountant with my father. At his bank.”

“Fidelity Fiduciary Bank?”

Castiel squinted. “What?”

Dean spoke next in a lilting sing-talking melody, “You'll achieve that sense of conquest, as your _af-flu-ence_ expands. In the hands of the di _rrrr_ ectors who invest as _pro-pri-ety_ demands.”

He squinted harder, felt the skin bunching up above his brow. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Dean blew a raspberry out between pursed lips and turned to the little boy, who wasn’t crying at all anymore, attention fixed fully on Dean. “Can you believe this guy?” he said conspiratorially, jerking his thumb in Castiel’s direction. Castiel colored. “I was just gettin’ serious _Mary Poppins_ vibes from you, that’s all. That can’t have been what you wanted to do.”

“It’s what I had always planned,” he said truthfully. He been groomed for a position at the bank from the time when he was very small. “What was expected,” he added.

“Well, I hear you there, at least. As far as expectations go.”

“I suppose you were expected to be a window animator?” Castiel said, a little ice creeping into his tone.

“Not really,” Dean said simply, and he added a final flourish on his drawing with a fancy flick of his pen, pulling his hand back. Castiel could see now what he’d been drawing—it was a caricature of the boy, his little face fully recognizable, except he was all dressed up in Indiana Jones gear—leather jacket, hat, whip. Dean handed the map to the kid.

He smiled widely. “Your leather jacket is really cool,” he said. He clutched the map to his chest.

“Yeah?” said Dean. “M’dad gave it to me when I was only a little bit bigger’n you are. Y’know, your parents seem like pretty cool folks too, so maybe go easy on ‘em?” The kid nodded very seriously, like he’d been given an order of grave importance, and then scampered off to wave the drawing in his parents’ face, pointing back to Dean when their eyebrows dipped in question. Dean waved at them when they looked over and they waved back, smiling. Castiel found himself smiling a little as well.

“Yeah, not really what I planned on,” he said again. “But it turned out alright.” He leaned heavily on one hand and knuckled his sternum again. “Why’d you drop out?”

The smile was gone. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said.

“Aw, c’mon dude. I know you’re not much of a Disney man yourself, but you must know there’s always a—”

“I didn’t,” said Castiel, all hardness and finality, “have a choice.”

Dean looked at him helplessly, the same expression he had when he’d seen the little boy crying across the room. Like he wanted nothing more than to reach out and make it better.

In an effort to diffuse the tension, Castiel mumbled, “I wasn’t especially good at it anyway. Numbers are so concrete. I could do it. But the fact that I didn’t especially like it hampered things a bit.”

“I’m sure you were better at it than I woulda been. I think most of my high school years, right up until I dropped out and got my GED, I just turned in doodles.” He grinned, flicked his eyes rakishly up to Castiel’s. “What are you real good at, then?”

That was a question he’d been half-heartedly trying to answer since he’d moved here. He had all the freedom in the world, as Gabriel liked to remind him. All the freedom to do anything he wanted.

Castiel chose to do nothing. Or, maybe he didn’t choose it so much as he fell into it and chose not to pull himself back out. Doing nothing was a novelty in itself, and something he’d never found himself doing before.

So he said, “I’m not very good at much of anything.” And he believed it.

Dean sucked in a harsh breath and rubbed the flats of his palms up and down his legs.

“I don’t really know what to say to that, Cas. I dunno you well enough to, like, fight that fear you got in you. But believe _me_ when I say that I don’t believe you.”

Castiel laughed. Dean furrowed his brows. “Naw, man, like—you see a lot—a _lot_ —of idealistic people popping in and out of here, and Disney always seems like the kinda summer job where you’re gonna ‘find yourself,’ like you’re gonna come in here and Mickey’s gonna help you realize you got a secret knack for, I dunno. Engineering. Law. Fucking— _geology._ Some shit. A lot of the older people here though, they got stuck, because they kept not seein’ anything worth finding, not having any big revelations, and it’s always easier in a place as pretty and hopeful and happy as Disney to think—tomorrow. But people don’t really make the effort to meet it halfway, and the idealism dies.” He breathed out. “You can’t let it. No matter what, you can’t. Uh. You can’t resist that hope. You gotta think, ‘I’m doing the best I can. I’m proud of me. Things’ll be better.’”

“Like a happily ever after?” Cas said, skeptical. Dean leaned forward again, lacing his fingers.

“Sorta,” he said, scrunching his nose.

Castiel finally sat down next to him, emulating the movement with his own hands. Castiel looked at the screen in front of him, where Donald Duck was throwing another massive fit. Dean’s attention, though, flicked to the framed pictures behind them again, the beautiful woman in the blue dress whose face Dean knew well enough to animate with flawless precision, right down to all the places that her face wrinkled when she smiled, right down to the soft wave of her hair.

“Who’s that woman?” Castiel said quietly. “Is she—is she important to you?”

“You could say that,” he said. “She’s my mom.”

“I—oh. Was she.” He drew in a breath. “She was very beautiful. And she looks very kind.”

Dean’s eyes went soft. “Thanks, Cas.”

“She worked here?” Dean nodded. “And…and your father too? Is that what you meant about expectations?”

Dean sucked in a breath, eyes narrowed as he seemed to debate with himself about something. He nodded to himself a moment later, some invisible something decided. “My—my dad was just a ride mechanic. He wanted to earn enough money to open his own garage. My mom was a Disney-employee-for-lifer. She was—real idealistic.” Dean laughed quietly, helplessly, like he couldn’t fathom what else he should do. His shoulders raised in a shrug. “Which my dad resented the hell out of after she died. Y’know, after things _kept_ going wrong for him. For her. For—for Sammy and me.” He ticked all the things that were wrong off on his fingers. “Didn’t get his garage ‘cause he couldn’t afford to quit after she died. Saddled with two pathetic little kids. Bitter and miserable right up until he ran himself into a tree coupla years ago.” Dean breathed out hard. “I don’t think he could stop himself thinkin’—the Blue Fairy not getting her happily ever after? What kind of a world do we live in where everyone’s dreams comes true but hers? The one who hoped for it the most?” He rubbed the back of his head, ran the hand straight down his chest absently. “I think maybe that’s what I mean by expectations.”

They were silent for a moment. Dean chafed his own hand with his thumb, and Castiel couldn’t take his eyes off it, even when Dean started to hum, deep and crackly, a melody Castiel was familiar with. He’d seen _Dumbo_ before, just the once, but he could remember this part. The crying elephant, the gigantic tears, the mother reaching her trunk out from behind bars to stroke her baby’s face.

_Hum, hum, hum, hm-hm-hm._

The words in his mind were from Gabriel, some long-forgotten memory where he’d teased Castiel for being on the verge of tears during that sequence in the film by spitting the lyrics back at him, a mockery.

_Ba-by mine, don’t you cry. Ba-by mine, dry your eyes._

Castiel reached over and gave an awkward, perfunctory pat to Dean’s hand, drawing back abruptly when the doors across the room swung open, revealing a big, high-ceilinged theater and a stage. The little boy, hand in hand with his mother now, filed in.

“We should go watch it,” Castiel said quietly. “The show.”

“Yeah,” said Dean, looking a little downtrodden. He got to his feet. Almost without thinking, he took Dean’s hand. Dean looked at him like that was the best thing that had ever happened to him, eyes wide open and so green. He had a smattering of freckles across his nose from the walk over in the sun.

Lincoln was nothing like the cheesy animatronics he’d seen at pizza places growing up. From the moment he stood up to the moment he sat down, Castiel felt like he was getting a pep talk from a treasured mentor. Every movement was fluid and natural. More than anything, Dean didn’t once let go of his hand, and that almost surprised Castiel more than anything.

* * *

In the midst of an impromptu lesson Castiel wasn’t at _all_ following about something called a multiplane camera, they stumbled upon the show just in front of King Arthur’s Carousel. Castiel had heard echoes of it several times a day when he’d worked at various Fantasyland attractions, but he’d never actually seen it. When Dean heard the echoes around the side of the carousel, he stopped in his tracks, rocking on the balls of his feet at the sight of man with a long, white beard squealing high-pitched commands at the audience.

Dean grabbed onto his arm, dragging him into the little cluster of a crowd. He cut a line through all the adults, stopping just behind the kids at the front. He looked a bit like an overexcited child himself.

They’d missed the first bit of the show, but Castiel caught that they were looking for a king ( _or queen!_ as the troupe of musicians behind him pointed out between trumpeting). He knew about the legend of the sword in the stone from _The Once and Future King_ , though he’d never imagined Merlin looking or acting quite so—ridiculous. This Merlin was loud and flamboyant as he scanned the crowd, looking for a volunteer.

Kids in front of them waved their arms, begged to be selected, jumping up and down. From the way he’d pulled them to the front of the crowd so suddenly, Castiel half expected that Dean would be doing the same. When he said as much, Dean replied, “Dude the first person they pick is never the king. That’s the show formula. Someone’s gotta fail first. That’s why you wait to volunteer until the _second_ one.”

Castiel said, “What?”

Merlin selected a man in the back of the crowd for the first time around. And Dean was right, he did fail. Splendidly. He was wearing a fanny pack and a Hawaiian shirt and he strained futilely, went red-faced trying to drag the sword out of the stone. No avail.

“It’s rigged?” Castiel said. Dean gave him a skeptical look, brows furrowed, smile baffled.

“Uh, of course it’s rigged dude. It’s a show.”

“So the magician _decides_ who can pull the sword out of the stone,” Castiel deadpanned.

“Yeah. It’s a _show_.”

“That’s hardly in the spirit of _The Once and Future King._ ”

“Well, the technology required to sense who is most worthy is a little beyond us at the moment. I think Disney is looking into it though.”

Castiel squinted at him skeptically, but he had to look away when he realized that they were asking for another volunteer and Dean had begun some not-so-subtle pointing in his direction. He hoisted one hand over Castiel’s shoulder to point as him from the other side, did a little orbiting circle with his other pointer finger over the top of Castiel’s head.

“Dean. Stop,” said Castiel. But it was already too late. Merlin had taken notice of him, and even though Castiel shook his head and backed away, there was a solid wall of Dean behind him, and Dean got his hands up and _pushed_.

“It’s alright, man,” Dean said into his ear just before he stumbled forward. “I know this guy.” Which was when Castiel realized he’d been _had_.

In _The Once and Future King,_ the one that pulled the sword out of the stone was the one that got to be king, yes, but there was an underlying current of _worthiness_ and _intelligence_ and _bravery,_ and even though this was a child’s attraction at Disneyland, and Dean had joked about Disney not having the technology to determine who was most worthy of wielding it, Castiel had images of trying and _failing_ in front of all these people jump unbidden to his mind. His hands were shaking when he approached the stupid fake anvil in the center of the cobblestoned street, and people were accumulating all the while. He had half a mind to sprint, but when he looked back over his shoulder, Dean gave him a ridiculous thumbs up, and Castiel reconsidered.

Plus, the troupe of street musicians stood in his way. He couldn’t escape now without taking out the guy with the tuba, and that wasn’t really something he was willing to commit to. Merlin asked him his name.

“Castiel,” he told him, enunciating carefully, voice shaking.

“That’s a mouthful,” said Merlin, patting him in the shoulder. There was sweat puddling at the small of his back, slicking his palms, as they set him up behind the anvil. Blood pounded in his ears, and somehow he _knew_ that the stupid sword wouldn’t come out of the stupid anvil. Merlin would turn around and say, “have you really been sleeping on your brother’s couch for _two years_?” and, “you really haven’t even triedto get into a _community college_?” Hell, he half-imagined the sword sinking further back into the stone, retreating away from his hands.

“Did you hear me, Castiel?” Merlin said somewhere to his left, mangling his name a little. Castiel realized that his vision had tunneled onto the sword and the anvil it was buried in, and the internal dialogue had turned into a withering, judgmental, _And you’re lusting after men like a fucking whore, Castiel, really? After all your parents did for you?_ in Merlin’s voice. When he looked up, Dean was looking at him with a baffled expression from the audience, but he waved his hands in a _go on!_ gesture when Castiel’s eyes landed on him.

“No,” Castiel said simply.

“Well, I asked you to pull on the sword silly!” Merlin lifted his arm at the elbow and guided his hand toward the hilt, which Castiel took in hand automatically, even though his fingers slipped on the cool metal, couldn’t find purchase immediately.

“Let’s give him a little encouragement!” The crowd let out a half-hearted round of applause, people in the periphery giving little golf claps. Dean, though, let out a whoop and a holler, hoisting his hands above his head to clap, revealing a little swath of his tummy where the shirt under his leather jacket rucked up. Castiel immediately looked up, back at Dean’s face, because Disney probably did know, Disney had probably seen, Disney had probably—

“Now _pull_!” Merlin said.

Castiel did, on instinct, responding to the command. His hands were so wet with sweat they slipped right off the handle on the first vicious _tug_ and his right fist hit him directly in the face. He staggered back with his hands over his nose, right into the troupe of musicians, and the trumpet that had been signaling what would be his dramatic victory cut off with a disconsolate warble.

Merlin helped him stagger back to the main arena, looking genuinely concerned for him now, and he drew his hand back immediately when he encountered the cool patch of sweat at the base of his spine.

“A little stage fright, kiddo?” he said, and Castiel shook his head, hoping they wouldn’t make him again, because he’d tried, and the sword had chosen someone else. “How about you come up here and help him out!”

He was talking to Dean. Dean was easy to please, stepping around the bushes and into the arena, giving a little wave to the audience and to the kids riding the carousel behind the main stage. He didn’t mind the sweat when he guided Castiel back to the sword. He put his hand on his back and kept it there, and when they got back to the anvil and Castiel’s vision tunneled yet again, Dean was the one to wrap his hands around the grip, one hand secure around either side of the cross-guard, his own hands secure around Castiel’s, a reassuring touch and a warm weight at his back.

It was Dean who gave the command this time.

“Now _pull_ ,” he said, just softly, in Castiel’s ear. And Castiel did.

The sword came cleanly out of the anvil, like it had been released from some magnetic grip. And it probably _had_ Castiel realized; the whole thing was _rigged_ , and a child could have pulled it out.

It didn’t stop him sagging with pure _relief_ at the sight of it glinting in the late afternoon sun.

“Two kings!” said Merlin. “Unprecedented!”

He didn’t even sound disgusted at all.

The crowd clapped, more than the polite golf clap from before, a genuine little enclave of happiness. When they inaugurated them, they gave Castiel the red, fur-lined cloak, they gave Dean the crown, and they both held on to the scepter together.

* * *

The next day, after his miserable work day concluded with his shift partner Uriel starting a shouting match with him, Dean declared that he would brighten his day. So he bought him a churro and introduced him to his brother.

Sam was in full costume, the Beast rather than the Prince today, and Castiel knew that he wasn’t _actually_ the full seven feet tall that the costume made him, but that didn’t stop him from cutting a rather intimidating figure. They munched their churros and watched him from afar, waiting for the big herds of children swarming around his legs to subside before they could approach. Dean had a fond look on his face, and he kept taking big, exaggerated bites that puffed out his cheeks and looking in Sam’s direction.

“I’m not supposed to eat these,” he confided in Castiel. He was done before Castiel had even finished half of his. “It drives him crazy, but he can’t say shit.” He had sugar all over his face, and Castiel smiled a little fondly, reached over himself with a few cautious looks around and used the back of his hand to brush it off. Dean snorted like it tickled, a puff of air against his hand.

When the tide of children had ebbed, Dean dusted the cinnamon sugar off his hands and walked forward, Castiel following sedately on his heels. There were a few character bodyguards hovering behind Beast and Belle, but as Dean approached, he waved them off, and they seemed to know Dean, so they gave him a thumbs up and took off in the direction of the character dressing rooms.

“I like to introduce him to people when he’s in full costume ‘cuz he can’t talk back,” Dean said, loud enough for Sam to hear through the giant mask. “Heya, Prince Adam.” He clapped his little brother on the shoulder. The Belle from the other day stood beside him. She was in a different version of the same costume today, the little blue dress that Belle wore in the beginning of the film. Her hair was pulled back into a blue-bowed ponytail. She was smiling sweetly, but there was something murderous in the depth of her eyes when she saw Dean approaching. “Heya Cruella. Kill any puppies today?” He hummed a few bars of a song under his breath. Da-dum-da-dum-dum. Da-dum-da-dum-dum.

“Dean,” she said, saccharine. “You’ve made a friend. How good for you.”

Dean narrowed his eyes, imitated her sweet face. “Ha ha ha. This is Cas. Cas, this is Beast. And this is my little brother Sammy.” That was the end of it for Belle. She looked around, casting furtive glances for children who might be watching, but everyone in the area seemed pretty preoccupied with a Peter Pan who was crowing a rooster call and standing on a bench about twenty feet away. She popped Dean right in the arm. Dean rubbed the spot and laughed, but the Beast _jumped_ forward when he saw what she was doing, put his big, clawed hand on top of hers in a way that couldn’t be anything less than intimidating coming from a seven-foot guy in a massive suit. She even looked a little chastised.

“Geez, man, come on, I know I bruise pretty easy, but I probably deserved that.” Castiel looked between them. Belle was a good foot shorter than Dean, he honestly wasn’t sure why anyone was concerned that she could _actually_ hurt him.

They started the walk back to the break room, Sam with his massive paw clasping gently on Dean’s shoulder as Dean worked his way casually through the crowd. People in full costumes like Sam had a thirty minutes on, thirty minutes off schedule, because otherwise they’d boil alive in their own perspiration. Dean talked about Sam, loud enough that Sam could hear him in the suit, ambiguous enough that for passing kids, it didn’t seem like he was referring to anyone in the proximity at all.

“My kid brother, he’s about to start a law degree in Nor Cal, at Stanford. But he’s taking this semester off to intern at a firm down here. He’s been working in the parks in some capacity since he was only yea high,” Dean gestured somewhere beneath his chin, a good foot and a half beneath where the monolithic beast costume now towered above them. It was hard to imagine Sam ever being _just_ that tall, now. “He graduated with honors from Stanford for his undergrad, but he still came home every summer. They only just gave him a character job this year though, ‘cause Sam sucks with kids.” The beast jerked his whole upper body toward Dean. Inside the costume, that was probably just a disbelieving knee-jerk head twist. Outside, it was a massive production. “Jess is the only reason he’s as good as he is now, too. My brother is a big ‘ole awkward Sasquatch.”

They reached the break room and pulled the door open. Sam didn’t waste much time in mucking with some clasps underneath the massive head. When he lifted it off, Castiel could see a harness, two shoulder straps that kept the whole device in place. Sam shook his hair, corded thinly with sweat. His face was rosy and wet, and he took a gasp of air like he was coming up from the bottom of lake. He handed the giant mask to Dean.

“Thanks Dean,” he panted.

“It seems that you like children, Dean. And you’re very good with them.” Castiel said, squinting. The smell from the suit wafted out to greet him, and Castiel found himself wondering, for maybe the thousandth time, how someone could stand to be in one of them for thirty minutes at a time. It smelled like gym clothes left to marinate in a locker over a long weekend—like a pile of filthy socks, except magnified one thousand times. But Dean looked almost covetous of the suit, absently running his hands over the head in his hands as Belle plopped down to the side, head tipped back. “Did you never try to be a character yourself? I would think that you would love to interact with them more closely.”

He was certainly attractive enough for it. Dean looked the part of a prince, easily. A hero. Give him a cape and some riding boots, Castiel himself would’ve been lining up for photographs with him. He understood there was more to it than looking the part, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to be one of the most handsome men Castiel had ever encountered.

Sam cut his eyes across to Dean, and Dean took in a sharp breath, eyes going a little glassy and distant. He pulled his coat in tight around himself. He wasn’t sweating despite the heat outside. Sam was the one flushed with heat, but he offered Dean first pull on a water bottle that Belle tossed his way, concern in his eyes. Dean just shook his head slowly.

“It’s real tough to get those positions, Cas,” he said. “I guess I kinda uh—blew the audition. I tried, though, you know?” The smile is back, weaker this time. “Would be nice.”

“For what it’s worth,” Castiel said, “I think you would be an excellent prince.”

Dean laughed, big and hearty and unexpected. “Who’s to say I even woulda been a prince, huh? Where’d you get that? Probably would’ve been a villain.”

Dean set the Beast head down on the table next to Belle. It looked a bit like a prize trophy, sitting like that. It was kind of amazing how much life Sam breathed into the mask when he was in the full costume, how much more animated the entire piece seemed when he moved within it. Dean started helping Sam out of the suit, something that seemed familiar to him as he undid buckles, folded down fabric, patted pieces of Sam’s body as they were gradually unearthed.

“I think you would’ve been Prince Charming.”

He had his back turned to Castiel, but Castiel could see where a pleased flush was creeping onto his cheeks. Sam glanced up at Castiel through his lashes, a secret smile on his face.

“Woulda been—huh. Who are you always telling me I would be, Sammy?” said Dean. He handled each piece of the costume with the careful reverence he seemed to think it was due, finger-combing out the tangles in the long fur. Castiel knew that a character costume manager would take care of maintaining it later, but Dean seemed content to groom it himself. He found a leaf in the fur that crested Beast’s spine and plucked it out, twisting it in his fingers.

Sam swept his hair back. The sweat made it stick there. “Gaston. ‘Cuz you’re a giant, conceited prick.” The softness in Sam’s eyes belied the statement; Castiel was really not so sure he believed himself. Dean struck a heroic pose, puffing his chest out, and his leather jacket seemed to drip off him.

“I would be an awesome Beast hunter,” he said, taking the Beast head in hand again. “I could kick your ass any day of the week.”

“I dunno Dean, I’ve always thought you were more of a Rapunzel,” Belle said, batting her eyelashes. Dean sneered a laugh.

“Ha _ha_ ,” he said. “Very funny.”

“Frollo, then.”

“Shaddup, Ruby.”

“Radcliffe.”

“I think she’s right about Rapunzel, too,” Castiel said earnestly, looking at the little quirk to Dean’s nose, the face shape, the freckles, the green eyes. He’d never seen the movie, but he saw images of her all over the park. There had been scenes from her film in the windows at Emporium. He remembered one in particular—her sitting opposite a rakish man in a rowboat as beautiful glowing lanterns reflected in the water around them. She was pretty and enthusiastic in all that he’d seen of her, just like Dean was.

Dean smiled brightly, batting his eyelashes. “Oh yeah? You gonna be my Flynn?”

Castiel blushed. Based on context clues, he took it that Flynn was the love interest.

Belle stuck her tongue out and said, “Eugh!” Sam laughed, long and loud, and it lit his cheeks again, flushing them a high red. Castiel’s second inclination was to look around the break room to make sure no one was looking, but his _first_ was to _agree_ , because the prospect of the little boat, the romance on the water, was nice. Tempting.

“We could find ourselves a nice boat ride and reenact the whole thing.” Dean waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Castiel got the sense that he was no longer referring to a peaceful boat ride.

“Ew, Dean. Pretty sure that didn’t happen in _Tangled_. Please don’t be one of those gross weirdoes who fucks on the rides,” Sam said. “ _Kids_ ride those things, man.”

“Ha! You talk a big talk for someone who has raunchy sex dreams about boinking Mary Poppins on the _Peter Pan’s Flight_.” Sam sputtered. “C’mon Sam. Was she _practically perfect in every way_?”

Belle absolutely burst out laughing, clutching at her gut. Sam pursed his lips so hard they went white, eyebrows climbing to his hairline. “I _respect_ Bela Talbot as a _person_ and a _skilled character actor_ and—” The more Sam talked, the louder Belle laughed, until he just gave up and whined, “C’mon Dean, I told you not to tell anyone.”

“Correction,” Dean said. “You told me not to tell _Jess_.”

Sam gave him the hairy eyeball. Cas wasn’t sure if he was allowed to laugh as well.

“The point still stands, Dean. Dreams are not reality. Don’t fuck on the rides.”

“Ah, like it matters. You and I both know how well they clean those buggers.” Dean tipped his head back to look wistfully at the ceiling, a half a smile on his face. “And you know I could only hope to join the elite there though, Sammy. I could only hope.” Dean missed the look Sam shot him at the words, but Castiel saw it. It was a sort of knee-jerk frown that flickered across his face like a flash of light, a reflected window on a passing train. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something he wanted Dean to see, and it was gone by the time Dean looked back down.

“Castiel doesn’t seem like that kind of guy anyway, do you Cas?” Sam said. Dean looked at him _very purposefully,_ heat behind his eyes. Castiel’s brain, on autopilot, immediately attempted to conceive of every single thing he could possibly do with Dean on any of the rides he’d ever been on. Dean laughed when his face lit bright pink.

“Shame on you, Sam,” Dean said. “Underestimating my good buddy Cas, here. He’s got just as dirty a mind as anyone, doncha baby?” Dean looped an arm around his neck, Beast head still slung under his other arm. He went to plant a kiss in Castiel’s hair, but he ducked out of it and shoved Dean, skillfully dodging under his arm. Castiel really hadn’t shoved hard, but Dean lost his grip on the head and it tumbled heavily to the floor.

“Hey,” said Sam, raising his arm. “ _Cool it_.”

Sam looked just about as imposing as he did in the Beast costume, eyebrows drawn together tight, big furrow in the dip of his brow. Castiel immediately backed off, chastised. Dean just looked pissed off.

“Aw, _here_ we go again,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.

“Dean, he—”

“No, Sam, _you_ need to cool it,” Dean rubbed a little at his chest. “Jesus, fuck. You know I _can_ function on my own. I _somehow_ manage to stay alive without you takin’ punches for me when you’re up at school. You gotta know by now I can take care of myself.”

“And _you_ knowhow I feel about that, too, Dean. If you would just—” He clawed his hands and shook them, frustrated. This was clearly a well-worn argument between them. Sam had the exhausted air of the long-suffering about him. “No. You know what. Not now. Just. Go have fun with your friend.” He waved his hand dismissively.

“‘Friend,’ Sam?” he said. “What’re you, a sixty year old woman who still says the guy that’s lived in her son’s one bedroom for fifteen years is his ‘roommate’?”

“Christ, Dean.”

“ _Well_.”

Castiel exchanged a look a mutual discomfort with Belle.

“C’mon now, boys,” Belle said. “Put ‘em away. Neither of us really want to see the pissing contest.”

The brothers held one another’s glares stubbornly for a moment. Sam was the first to give in and break the spell. “Go on, Dean. I’ve gotta shower and get dressed so I can meet up with Jess. I’ll talk to you later on.”

After they’d said their goodbyes and were working their way up and out of the break room, down a long, dank cinderblock hallway, Cas said, “I’m not sure why you were so insistent upon displaying a…relationship to your brother.” He could feel the blush across his face, not sure to cope with how out of the loop he’d felt in Sam and Dean’s strange, loaded conversations.

“He needs to know,” Dean said, “That I can have relationships. I’m not just someone who needs to be taken care of.”

“Why would he believe that? You seem…quite competent to me.”

“Just. Brothers. Y’know?”

Castiel nodded, but the truth was, until that moment, it hadn’t even occurred to Castiel that Dean would need to be taken care of at all. Maybe that was what he liked about him. There was something reassuringly Disneyesque about Dean. Dean really _was_ as close as Castiel had ever come to Prince Charming, he hadn’t been lying when he’d suggested it.

In all his time surrounded by costumed heroes and Disney magic and animatronics—Dean was the only one to come _close_ to that ideal.

* * *

Castiel was ashamed to say that really only one thing about his meeting with Sam stuck with him.

Dean had said that he _could only hope to join_ the elite group of Disney mile-high riders with a wistful, hopeless inflection, and it set off a spark in Castiel that, like some of his other, less inappropriate sparks, he had thought long extinguished. Gabriel always told him which attractions were the best for sex, which ones were the most conducive to a successful handjob or blowjob, which attractions made it the easiest to slip away for a quickie. He’d never thought that he would have the opportunity to apply the knowledge to himself and his own experiences, because before Dean, before he’d seen the back of his head and the tips of his ears and the pretty Blue Fairy, he didn’t think this was something that the world would let him have.

That he would let himself have.

But when Dean declared that today in Castiel’s magical education they were going to tackle The Haunted Mansion, Castiel got Ideas.

 _As long as you pregame a little bit_ , Gabriel had said, _start the show early, you can make it through a handie in Haunted Mansion no problem. It’s pretty freakin’ dark in there._

The pregaming wasn’t a problem. Already, under the sign at the front of the ride, he was half a thought away from being hard. All the way through the queue, the winding and contrary graveyard, Castiel could _feel_ the thumping of his heart down in his groin. He wanted to rub and to rut and Dean didn’t seem to have the slightest clue as he pointed out silly dead pet names in the cemetery outside, the floating harness of the invisible horse that led the hearse at the entrance. By the time they’d made it inside, his mouth was dry with the burning need to act on his newfound desires.

They hadn’t kissed yet. Castiel wondered how appropriate it would be to rub your half-formed erection up against the your not-boyfriend’s ass in a line full of children, figured it probably wouldn’t be appropriate at all, and then just waited until the dark took over the room they were ushered into to actually do it.

Dean was busy pointing to the portraits on the wall—an old woman, a ballerina, two pudgier gentlemen—and telling Cas to watch carefully, offering little bits of trivia about the way that this elevator went versus the way that the elevator in Disney _world_ went, and Castiel didn’t know what the hell he was talking about when he said _elevator_ until the floor shifted ever so slightly, and the room went _down_. Suddenly the portraits were elongating, hidden portions of them coming into the light, revealing that the subjects were all doomed in some way.

“ _Is this haunted room actually stretching?!”_ Dean said, lowering his voice to speak alongside the narration, his face contorting with gleeful menace. “ _Or is it your imagination?_ ”

That was the end for Castiel. Maybe it was the way that his clear passion shone through his eyes, but he found Dean _hopelessly_ arousing in that moment, so full of life and love and—

He rubbed up against his hip, clinging to his side. The leather of his jacket squeaked underneath his hands, and it took Dean a moment to really register what he was feeling. It wasn’t until lightning struck, the narration began a ghostly cackle, and the light went completely out, that Dean’s eyes found his, the whites of them glowing in the darkness with what little light there was. Castiel licked his lips.

Dean said, “ _Dude_ ,” quietly so the gaggle of teenage boys mocking the ghostly noises halfway across the elevator wouldn’t hear. Castiel didn’t care. He let out a needy little whimper into Dean’s leather-covered shoulder, rutted up again harder before the lights came back on and he was able to watch Dean’s pupils contract in the sudden onslaught of light. Dean let out a nervous little laugh, a breath against Castiel’s head, and rubbed at his back.

Dean had wanted him to be taking in the scenery, but they were both distracted now, making their way down a narrow hallway lined with scenes of thriving life shifting into images of decay. He didn’t know what the seating arrangements looked like, but he was pleased when little two-seater people movers came into view, big enough for the both of them and very little else.

The ride attendant greeted Dean familiarly, but Cas was pleased to see that Dean was too distracted to respond, his face, usually a little bit pale, flushed in the flicker of artificial candlelight. Castiel’s own legs felt full of blood, pumping and uncoordinated on the moving walkway by the little cars.

“Buggies,” Dean supplied absently. “Doom buggies.” They loaded in. The bar over their laps went down, and Castiel was so desperate for stimulation at this point that he almost pushed back up when the loader pushed down to check the bar and send them on their way. “Dude I’m supposed to be teachin’ you about youthful innocence and Disney fun. Don’t you think you should at least ride it once in your right mind before you ask me to jerk you off during it?”

“I am in my right mind,” Castiel said feverishly, tugging at Dean’s jacket. Even though he felt just about ready to hair-trigger like a teenager, he knew that they didn’t have much time. “We’ll jerk each other off. How long does this ride last?”

“Uh,” Dean said, pulling at the sleeves of his jacket and shivering when he was exposed to the chilly, moist air of the ride. “Like seven minutes?” Castiel threw the jacket over bother their laps. “But Cas, I don’t—”

“Remember, the spirits will only materialize if you keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the ride,” said the deep voice from the speaker next to his ear. Dean shivered again. Castiel stopped halfway through reaching for Dean’s fly to actually really look at him.

“Is this alright?” he asked. “I can…I figured that it was something you wanted. You talked about it like it was something you wanted.” Dean tilted his head to the side. Outside the buggy, crows cawed ominously. There was a fire in Castiel’s blood.

“Oh,” said Dean a little desperately, his confident voice on the verge of a crack, “it _is_ , it _really_ —but how about, uh, this time around. I just help you out and let you take it all in.” He moved Castiel’s hand from where it hovered in the air next to his shoulder. He looked at Castiel’s face. The buggies on either side of them had the frat boys from the elevator, two guys on their left that would occasionally shout to the group in the buggy on their right. When the little cart turned, going around a bend, they could see the boys punching and jabbing at each other. Dean didn’t let that stop him from diving right for Castiel’s fly, hand moving beneath the leather jacket.

“You can’t jizz on the lining though, man, so you gotta tell me when you’re gonna come,” he said, unzipping it and feeling around. He let out a huff of amused breath against Castiel’s ear when he felt him already hard and leaking. “Dude, you’re a little worked up.”

“Been worked up since I saw you for the first time,” Castiel admitted, thrusting up a little against Dean’s hand as Dean’s fingers worked over him experimentally, mapping unfamiliar territory by touch alone. He traced his nail gently around the rim of the head, thumbing at the slit. And it was _true,_ everything he’d done since he’d seen Dean the first time had been about _him_ , driving inexorably toward him. He’d wanted to fuck him, yeah, but he was also just _worked up_ in general.

The buggy jilted to the side as it turned, throwing Castiel harder into Dean. Castiel panted into his collar. He caught a glimpse of the frat boys, the flickering of fake candles over their faces, and it sent a little thrill up his spine as Dean began stroking in earnest, palm flat and warm over the girth of him, keeping up a nice rhythm as they rose and fell on the tracks.

Suddenly Dean was a lurid green and musical instruments clashed. Dean licked his lips, and his eyes kept flickering to the scenery of the ride, as if he was gauging how much time they had left. The big open room was risky—when he looked across the table with the floating head, he could clearly see people looking straight back at him, and he clutched at the leather jacket on his lap. It was a bit of a sensory overload, being exposed to the sights and sounds of this ride while he had a hand on his cock, but that was nobody’s fault but his own. Dean had tried to warn him.

“ _Wizards and witches, wherever they dwell_ ,” he said into Castiel’s hair, “ _Give us a hint with the sound of a bell._ ” Castiel was so flustered that it took him a moment to parse that this wasn’t just some kind of fucked up endearment. Dean was quoting along with the ride again. A bell tinkled somewhere to his right.

“Are you really?” panted Castiel. “How do you have the presence of mind to—”

He flailed his hand until it was beneath the jacket. It almost fell from his lap and revealed his erection to what appeared to be a ballroom, but Dean used the hand that wasn’t keeping up with the steady stroking to hoist the jacket back up.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Castiel palmed Dean through his jeans, looking for even a hint that he was as aroused by this as Castiel was. Dean’s breath hitched, but he was totally soft. “Stop,” he said a little urgently. Castiel did.

It occurred to him that he was maybe a little bit—bullheaded about the whole thing. He tried to work up the presence of mind to protest, because Dean sounded a little bit distraught, but Dean stroked him with renewed fervor, almost apologetic, and Castiel closed his eyes _tight_ as the buggy tipped back and pointed them at a disconcertingly realistic star-studded ceiling.

He came halfway through the cemetery, drawn completely taut at Dean’s side. Dean cupped a hand over him as he did, but Castiel hadn’t warned him, and he knew he’d probably gotten a little something on the jacket despite his promise otherwise.

His body lost all its tension. Dean said the ride lasted about seven minutes. All told, time hadn’t really been a concern, because he hadn’t lasted more than five. Dean went to place a kiss in his sweaty hair, and Castiel shied away, tugging his clothing back into place as Dean cast around for a place to wipe the come from his hand.

“Where do I…?” he said despairingly, hand held out in front of him. Castiel bent double, whipped his shoe off, and pulled off his sock. When he resurfaced, Dean was cackling. Castiel rubbed the sock over Dean’s hand and said, “What’s so funny?” Dean pointed toward the wall opposite them.

There was a tall, thin ghost plunked right between them in a mirror there, grinning madly like he knew _exactly_ what they’d done. Castiel jumped and instinctively checked the buggy for unwanted passengers, even though he _knew_ there was no one between them, knew he would probably have been privy to a third party involved in their impromptu tryst. Dean saw him glancing back and forth, and he laughed even harder. Castiel rubbed hard at his hand with the sock, color rising in his cheeks, before he stuck it in his jeans pocket. It was covered in rainbow colored confetti. Gabriel’s, then. Who really cared. He slipped his sockless foot back into his shoe.

When they reached the end of the ride, Dean sweet-talked the nice girl in the black dress working unload into just leaving them on for another go.

“You’re actually gonna watch the ride this time,” he said. Dean pulled his coat back onto his shoulders with a sigh of relief and tucked Castiel against his side, head tipped back, eyes closed, as they wound through the employees-only area at the back of the ride. Castiel felt sated and lax, but removing the jacket from his lap brought Castiel face to face with the fact that Dean was, and had been for the entire ride, completely flaccid.

“You havin’ a stare-down with my crotch, Cas?” Dean said. “Is my crotch winning?” The back of the ride was quiet, dark. They could hear faint hints of the droning organ music emanating from the ride.

“I hope,” he bit his lip, hesitating. “I hope I didn’t force you into anything you didn’t want.”

Dean snorted. “If I didn’t want it, I probly woulda taken my hand off your dick.”

“But you didn’t…you didn’t get…” he gestured the aforementioned crotch. Dean sucked in a breath.

Every time Castiel had dared to think about this with Dean, he had always imagined him being sex hungry and voracious. The bodice-ripping kind of romantic hero.

“S’okay. Bad. I guess, bad time for.” He paused, explaining in awkward, halting sentences. “I didn’t want to get—too excited. But I was glad to do it for you. Seriously.” He cleared his throat. “Not all of us are so hell-bent on your weird instant gratification, dude. I’m all about the long game.”

Castiel wanted to be offended at that, but he couldn’t really work himself up to be. Dean said it lightly, clearly referring to the simple fact that Castiel had just gotten himself so worked up that he’d demanded Dean jerk him off in a classic ride in Disneyland. But Castiel couldn’t help but think about his job and his apartment and how the simple act of waiting for this handjob had seemed _impossible_. Castiel wanted now, now, now, because if now could be good it didn’t matter if tomorrow was going to be horrible. Tomorrow was always going to be horrible. That was what his life was right now.

The second time around, Dean kept up a steady stream of facts about the ride. He wasn’t expecting to be as intrigued with the complex scenes playing out in front of him, the plot that unfolded when the head in the crystal ball summoned the spirits, but he found that he couldn’t quite help himself. His eyes flickered around the ballroom lazily, marveling at how much there was to take in.

“Were the portraits…dueling?” he said when they’d reached the attic, interrupting his post-orgasm lethargy to lean over the railing and look back, surprised at the disappointment the stuck him in the gut when he realized how many little details he didn’t see.

Dean didn’t begrudge him the third go around. Of course he didn’t. He was more than pleased to take it one more time, slow, to point out the ghost in the base of the ballroom that appeared to blow out the birthday candles in her moldering old cake. They got the same tall, thin ghost every time, driven like a wedge between him and Dean, laughing. But by the third time, having an audience didn’t seem to matter so much.

* * *

Gabriel got Castiel a bed. One day, when Castiel came home from work with Gabriel at his heels, it was already waiting for him, already made, with earthy brown, conservative sheets and a bright pink Disney Princess comforter.

“I thought it would be best if I got you a standard bed set,” he said. “You know, nothing too outlandish for my little brother.”

It was a full-sized bed, pushed up against the corner in the living room. The comforter was obviously made for a twin sized bed, so it came up short on the end and the sides of Castiel’s. It was big and clunky and awkward, and it meant that he had to rearrange the rest of the furniture, so Castiel’s couch, where he’d spent the last two years cricking his neck to sleep, was across the room—the television too. It was a good layout, all things considered, and if they wanted to put up a curtain or a divider, then it wouldn’t be too obvious at all.

All of his feathers were stacked on a nightstand that Gabriel had clearly purchased as well, a little TV dinner tray with flowers on it and a wire frame down below.

“I,” Castiel said, running his hand over the comforter. “I.”

“I know, I know,” Gabriel said. “You don’t need it. But you can take it with you, uh, whenever you move out. And you can use it to bang your boyfriend on! Or even if you don’t you can. You know. Use it to sleep on.” Gabriel cleared his throat. “Because you live here now.”

Castiel sat on the edge of the bed, flopped back with his feet still on the floor. When he looked over at where his hand was curled, palm up, he saw Rapunzel smiling blankly in his direction with Ariel doing the same beneath her, both of them dressed in shades of purple and pink. He looked in the other direction and saw the feathers. He reached out, took one, held it gently between his fingers, running his fingernails up the underside until it shone.

“Thank you, Gabriel,” he said, appreciating the warm glow of feeling bubbling up inside him.

When he sat up, Gabriel was beaming, still in his leather cowboy chaps, happy just because he’d made his little brother happy, because that was something he wanted for Castiel.

Castiel smiled back.

* * *

In the waiting area of The Enchanted Tiki Room, Castiel found himself saddled with two children. Dean and Castiel had watched them say goodbye to their parents at a smoking area just outside the door, watched the older promise to take care of the younger, watched the younger promise to stick with the older, and watched the both of them promise that they would not, under any circumstances, talk to strangers.

So naturally, not five minutes later, he found himself in an in-depth discussion on the informative statues about the tiki gods surrounding the waiting area with one preteen girl in pink shorts and a pink top, and another little girl in a sequined blue dress that couldn’t have been more than—hell. Five? Six? Seven? Castiel was an impossible judge of anything or anyone. Dean would know if he asked, but Dean was too busy looking amused a little ways away, on a bench over by the goddess Pele.

“What’s this one?” the younger asked him as the older shot her a dirty look and tried to get her to go to the other side the waiting area, away from the somehow scary, mild-mannered park employee who had just wanted to read the descriptions for each god and goddess on his own. Instead of obeying, she pointed one grubby finger at the sign to the side of the god Maui and said, “Hey, what does this one say?”

The youngest started climbing on the benches like she knew no fear. She had white tennis shoes with sunflower soles hidden under her too-long dress, and the hem was dark and dirty and florally footprinted like it had been trodden upon all day long. Her sister looked embarrassed just to be seen with her.

“ _Claire_ , you can’t just _ask_ people that. Do you even _listen_ when mom and dad tell you to do stuff?”

Instead of listening, Claire patted at her knees for a second in thought and tried to scale the bamboo fence that separated them from the displays of gods and goddesses. Dean, still amused in his corner, didn’t move as Castiel panicked his mild, unobvious a panic. The most Dean did was a little wave, a _go-on_ gesture and the smuggest smile Castiel had ever seen. And hell, she was about to go toppling into the foliage, maybe straight into an ancient Polynesian god, so Castiel grabbed the back of her skirt and pulled her gently back.

“No,” Castiel said awkwardly. “No, no.”

The little girl took it as license to use him as a jungle gym instead. She turned around, smiled a gap-toothed smile, and said again, “What’s this one say?”

Castiel looked at the sign, figured it couldn’t hurt to indulge her, and read, deadpan, “Through his special mystic powers, he made the sun keep regular hours. Maui tells us time to go, time for wondrous tiki show.”

She stuck her fingers in her mouth. Castiel winced, because in the ten minutes since he’d first laid eyes on the little girl, he’d seen her touch the ground, the fence, the ground again, the dirt, the fence, and the bottom of her shoe. Through the fingers, she said, “What’s that mean?”

“Well,” he said, drawing it out long. “I think it means that he created days. He makes the sun go up and down at regular intervals,” Castiel tilted his head up, indicated the golden disc of the sun, high above their heads.

“That’s dumb,” said the older girl, crossing her arms over the team name on her chest. “In church, they say God did that.” He tone clearly conveyed God-with-a-capital-G. “ _And let there be light._ You know.”

Castiel blinked. Blinked again. Found himself faced by what he must have sounded like a before he went to college, maybe from the ages of ten to fourteen, when God had been the answer to each and every question, and he’d found himself scouring the Bible for passages to explain all the things that were wrong with his life. The mantra of his every panicked episode, first from his mother and then from himself, internalized, entirely ineffectual and unhelpful— _Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand._

Last week, when Castiel had presented a problem to Dean, Dean had quoted _The Lion King_ back at him. Times had changed.

“There are many other cultures with gods that are important to acknowledge as well,” Castiel said vaguely, squirming, as something else caught the littlest one’s attention across the enclosure. “Even if you don’t believe in them.”

“What about _this_ one,” she said, fearlessly gathering Castiel’s hand, and he could _hear_ Dean’s laugh across the enclosure when she led him to the next god in the lineup, because he was sure his disgust at the sticky, horrible, _wet_ feeling of her tiny little fist was visible. “I like his smile.”

“ _Claire_ ,” said the older one again, fingers clawed in absolute preteen embarrassment, “ _you can’t just grab people, oh my god._ ”

Claire led him to a statue of a chubby, colorful god with a completely chilled-out expression on his face. He kind of reminded Castiel of Gabriel. He tilted his head and read, “In the moonlight he loved to dance, natives who watched fell into a trance. Then under his spell all ladies and men,  
learned to dance the tropic top ten.”

The little girl just stared wide-eyed for a moment, comprehension dawning slowly on her face. “He teaches people to dance?”

Castiel shrugged. “So it seems.”

The little girl did a manic foot-stomping dance in a circle at his feet. “What about _those_?” she said. This time, she got behind Castiel and pushed, leading him all the way across the clearing to where Dean was smirking, elbows on the bamboo fence. Castiel looked at him with as much betrayal as he could properly express in squinted eyes. The older one followed the two of them with one continuous eye roll.

“What about these ones?” the younger said.

Dean said, “Yeah, Cas. What about these ones?”

Castiel ignored him and read, “Jealous Pele's angry scorn, is known to every native born. With mighty blast or simple cough, she blows her blooming top right off,” in a completely even voice, without any of the excitement that the final exclamation point on the description board seemed to want out of him.

It was the older girl who spoke first this time.

“She’s a girl god,” she said, snorting. “That’s weird.”

Castiel wrinkled his nose.

Her little sister said, “Shut up, Emma. I think she’s _awesome_ , don’t you think she’s awesome?” There was a tug at his pant-leg.

“Pele is one of the most powerful and memorable of this pantheon. She’s the goddess of the very volcanoes that formed the islands of Hawaii and gave its people life.”

Dean looked right into the little girl’s eyes and smiled. “That means he thinks she’s awesome too. He’s just a little bit of a stuffy dude.”

Castiel jerked. “I am _not_ —”

But the little girl had clearly already decided that Dean was an ally, and she grinned up at him too, doing the same manic little dance she had right in front of the last god.

Through the dance, she chanted, “Stuffy, stuffy, stuffy!” until it didn’t even sound like a word anymore.

“But that’s weird, right?” the older sister continued above the younger, still stuck. “That the god who invented dancing is a guy and the one who invented fire and volcanoes and anger and jealousy is a girl?”

Castiel looked at her, speechless. He wondered if this is what he’d sounded like to Dean when Dean had asked if he wanted to share an ice cream cone.

“I don’t think that’s weird at all, do you, Cas?” Dean said smoothly, lazily. Castiel shook his head. “Do you, princess?” Dean looked down at the little girl.

“No. Mom gets mad like volcanoes all the time.” She did another little dance in one place.

“Lots of ‘em are ladies,” said Dean. “You’ll see when they start talking anyway.”

“They _talk_?” the youngest said in wonderment.

They talked. As if on cue, drum beats echoed on the other side of the enclosure, and Castiel moved back with the little girls, wordless, to listen to their individual rhymes with rapt intensity. Dean watched them watching, satisfied smile on his face. And he got downright _smug_ when all the female gods got to talking, his eyes cutting to Cas like he _knew exactly what was going on in his head_ , and Castiel’s eyes cutting to the oldest girl, because he knew from experience exactly what was going on in hers _._ He could almost hear the sound of her preconceptions shattering behind her eyes.

It was almost heartbreakingly domestic to accompany the two little girls into the attraction, because then the younger one wanted to sit on Castiel’s lap through the show, and even though he said _no_ , she climbed on halfway through anyway, got tangled in her blue dress, and laughed when Dean righted her and whistled softly along with the dozens of birds.

“ _Most little birdies will fly away,_ ” Dean sang with them, looking playfully between Cas and the wriggling little girl on his knees, “ _but the Tiki Room birds are here every day_.”

And Castiel just wanted to reach out and touch him, because that really was the wonder, wasn’t it?

* * *

“ _Psst, avast. It be too late to alter course, matey,_ ” Dean said, deep and echoing along with the skull mounted on the wall ahead of them. “ _And there be blundering pirates lurking in every cove, waitin’ to board._ ” He scooted in close to Castiel, bumping their butts together on the slick plastic seats. “ _Sit closer together._ ” Castiel laughed, spared only a glance for the couple three rows behind them who also seemed to have taken the order to _sit closer together_ to heart. “ _And keep your bloody hands inboard. That be the best way to repel boarders_. _And mark well me words, mateys. Dead men tell no tales._ ”

“How do you know that?” said Castiel. “ _All_ of it? Really?”

Dean shrugged. “I know all the rides, dude. Inside and out. Well, ‘cept for the fast ones.” He smiled, softly, looked down at his hands. “My brother and I were here all the time when we were younger. And he’ll deny it, but he had a helluva pirate phase.” He snickered. “I think he’s going into law to compensate. Too much salty wrong-doing in his youth.”

They could hear people in the boats in front of them screaming, and rushing water, but this wasn’t, to Castiel’s knowledge, a thrill ride.

With that thought, they tipped over the edge of a drop. Dean went still and silent and tense next to him, grasping onto Castiel’s pant leg with one hand and his chest with the other. It was over in a moment, but it sent a pleasant tingle through Castiel’s spine.

“Why don’t you ride the fast ones?” Castiel said. Dean had never brought up the possibility of a Big Thunder, a Space Mountain, a Matterhorn run. He very determinedly stuck to the little rides, the slow-moving ones, where they always encountered kids in the queues, and where Castiel always ended up thinking just a little too much. They were in glowing caves, surrounded by the sound of echoing voices that Dean moved his lips along with like an afterthought. “I’d like it if we could ride Space Mountain together.” He prodded Dean in the side. “Dean?”

“Don’t like ‘em,” he said. There was more rushing water ahead, another set of aborted shouts from the boat in front of them, and Dean clutched Castiel’s pant leg again as they crested another little swell of a hill and plummeted down. “Teachin’ you to appreciate the slower things in life, Cas.” Dean swallowed. There was an edge to his voice that Castiel wasn’t so sure he liked all that much. “Take note.”

There was an awkward few moments of silence where Dean sat tense at his side, all the way through treasure troves full of fake gold and skeletons. Castiel wondered at this—he had been promised an adventure with living pirates, he thought. He didn’t understand why anyone would make the entire ride around things that had happened once. Disneyland was supposed to be about fantasy.

The scenery shifted.

Something exploded to Castiel’s right, and he flinched away. A rampart under siege from a pirate ship came full into view, and _there_ were the pirates he was looking for, mysteriously back from the grave and laying brutal assault on an old town.

“This was Sammy’s favorite part,” Dean said, finally speaking, only a little bit of that leftover edge to his voice. “When we rode it, it was different. They only added the weird Johnny Depp parts recently.” Dean hoisted an invisible sword aloft and mock-whispered in a pirate voice, “ _He needs persuasion, mate! Fire at will!_ ” The sword turned into a musket, and Dean fired, _ptchoo!,_ straight ahead. The character on the ship now was one Castiel recognized as being from the films. “He used to say that shit to my dad in full pirate voice and my dad fucking _hated_ it ‘cause I know he did maintenance on this ride and they don’t always turn that shit all the way off.” Dean grinned. “My little brother seems all put together now, but he was quite the rebel, then.”

Pirates swung from the mast of the ship, shadows swordfought on the walls, and the soldiers in the ramparts seemed to be doing a pretty piss-poor job of keeping them away, if the flickering fires and cowering men and overconfident pirates were any indication. Sure enough, the next scene was in the town, and the pirates appeared to have taken over.

“And you were an angel, I’m certain,” Castiel said, watching as a pirate dunked what appeared to be the mayor in a well, and he choked and gargled. “Completely innocent.”

Dean smirked. “I won’t lie, I had my mean streaks too. But a lot of the reason Sam was even bad like he was was ‘cause of me. He just wanted attention.” Dean interrupted himself to point to a pirate doing something that Castiel was not entirely certain would be regarded as politically correct, calling out like an auctioneer with a chubby woman in blue beside him and a buxom redhead waiting in the wings. “ _Shift your cargo, dearie,_ ”Dean leered along with the track on the ride,“ _show ‘em your larboard side!_ ” Castiel looked at him with wide eyes, vaguely horrified.

“Was that…did I really just witness a _wench auction_?” Castiel said. Dean laughed.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t always wanted to see a wench auction,” he retorted.

“Wholesome family entertainment,” Castiel said drily.

The ride wound on, and things in the fictional town descended into chaos. It was a good story, he thought. And kind of amazing that they could tell it with nothing but a sequence of events like this.

“What about you?” Dean said eventually.

Castiel hmmed, close and comfortable. “What? What about me?”

“What were you like as a kid?”

 “I was a very good boy.” Castiel snorted. “No rascals or scoundrels or uh—what was—”

“Really bad eggs?”

“Well, maybe a slightly bad egg,” he said. “A day or so past the expiration.”

“Aye, but you’re loved by your mommy and daddy,” Dean said, popping one eye shut and elbowing him in the side. The response was immediate, a drop more intense than the one he’d experienced earlier, when the ride had sent their boat cascading down the waterfall and into a treasure hunt. Castiel slumped away from him, shifting his butt away on the slippery little seat, back going straight. Everything was on fire, now, logs around them glowing with bright embers, because the pirates had gotten their treasure, but the whole world was completely aflame because of it. Castiel felt cold anyway.

“Not really,” he said quietly, hands cradled in one another between his legs. “Not anymore.”

“Oh, uh,” said Dean. It was the end of the ride. If the fall at been a cascading escape, clicking into the ticking track that carried them upward felt like a jarring return to the real world. Dean reached awkwardly across the seat with one hand, trying to reclaim the lost distance. He nudged his pinky against Castiel’s thigh. “Are they…? Because you know I lost my mom and dad—”

“They’re not fucking _dead,_ ” Castiel spat, probably more harsh than he’d intended. Dean retracted his hand, timid suddenly, and Castiel realized that his own hands were in hard fists at his sides. Dean had a straightforward relationship with his parents now at least, because Dean’s parents were dead, and even if they had ever hurt him before, they couldn’t hurt him now. “They’re not dead,” he said. It would be easier if they were. “Maybe really bad egg is apt after all.”

Dean didn’t say anything. The track went _click click click click._

“They kicked me out,” Castiel said. “Since you’re obviously so curious.”

Dean didn’t say anything. _Click click click click._

“Since I’m _gay_ ,” Castiel said. “Obviously.”

He said it like it didn’t physically hurt to. He said it short and rough and to the point like that wasn’t the first time he’d bothered to say it aloud to himself since before he got outed. They’d screamed it at him. His mother had cried it to him. Gabriel laughed about it, because Gabriel didn’t give a shit. Neither did Dean.

With the final “obviously,” they tipped back onto the level ground of the real world, curving around the front of the ride where there were people waiting for them, watching. Children waving as they came round the bend.

“Fuck ‘em. You’re an awesome egg,” Dean said, like it was that simple. “Let’s go get a pound of fudge from the Candy Palace and eat it while we watch the parade.”

They had come full circle, at the start of the ride again. Dean clambered out of the boat, then reached out a hand to help him out, too, because the pirates had set the whole city aflame, but it couldn’t reach them here, and it really was that simple. Baptism through fire and pirate’s treasure or something like that.

On the way out of the ride, Dean whistled the song— _yo ho, yo ho—_ and made at least two separate ass pirate ( _plunderin’ booty)_ jokes. Castiel swatted him on the behind right in front of the hook-handed gift shop attendant.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean couldn’t seem to get enough of people-watching. Maybe it was because he spent eight hours a day in what was essentially a glorified hamster cage being watched himself. He didn’t say anything, but ever since Sam had posited the idea that maybe Dean wasn’t an invincible warrior of truth and justice, Castiel had begun to get the sense that it—wore on him. Some days. Being the subject of such intense scrutiny.

Castiel prodded at a shrimp on his plate with his fork, looking up at Dean through his lashes, watching Dean unabashedly watch the boatloads of people drifting into the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Behind them, the mysterious bayou banjo player plucked slowly and carefully to the soft, peaceful echo of crickets and toads. Above them, there was an artificial sky, artificial stars and clouds, that he hadn’t even noticed when he first rode the ride. Dean looked completely at peace with the world here, his face composed and serene. It was apparently his regular table, here in the corner, surrounded by foliage, underneath gentle lantern light, engulfed in the sounds of swamp and running water. Castiel might’ve been jealous if the wait staff hadn’t seemed so genuinely surprised—excited—to see Dean here with another person. He couldn’t imagine how Dean hadn’t already brought people along with him—the Blue Bayou Restaurant was the only restaurant in the park that lived inside a ride, and it was hopelessly romantic in all the ways Dean seemed to want to be.

“Ah, lookie there. Money troubles.” Dean pointed to a couple with young children sandwiched between them, as much distance as possible from one another, clearly using the children as human shields. “Oh, and honeymooners! Ain’t that ironic.” True to Dean’s word, there were two lovebirds smushed against each other at the back of the boat looking picturesque in Mickey and Minnie ears with matching Mr. and Mrs. embroidery.

“How do you always manage to identify the troubles these people endure?” Castiel was—maybe a little bit too self-absorbed to notice these types of things himself, but he marveled each time Dean produced a piece of intuitive insight that he might’ve never guessed on his own. Gabriel was good at people in the same way, but Castiel had spent his whole life unknowingly unaware of what apparently amounted to the human condition.

Dean shrugged, one-shouldered, a little awkward. “You see a lot of tragedies, you know?” Castiel got the sense that maybe Dean knew about some of these very human tragedies first hand, not that Dean every really talked about it. Castiel could attribute any semblance of awareness to his new, Dean-granted powers of perception. “Hey, though. Lots of the same happiness, too. Check out these guys.”

When Castiel looked over, the vague outline of two women, holding hands and tucked in close together, became visible. When they rounded the track a little more and their features solidified in the dimness of the ride, Castiel could see that one of the women was in fact _Charlie_ , face flushed a bright, pleased pink. Her companion was pretty and dark-haired, with strong features and a distinctly roguish smile. Castiel waved dazedly. When Charlie’s eyes found his face across the water, she held up her linked hand and gave a thumbs up. Castiel only hesitated a moment before he pointed across his little table to Dean, and Dean waved too. Charlie’s face lit with so much happiness for him that she almost capsized their little boat disentangling her hand to give him two thumbs up instead. Then she brought her hands to her mouth and gave a mighty whoop across the bayou that took any ounce of their remaining discretion and stomped all over it. Every eye in the Blue Bayou restaurant turned to them. Castiel couldn’t resist the very immediate urge to sink lower into his seat and poke blindly at the same shrimp that had vexed him a few minutes ago. Across the table, Dean smiled brightly.

“Friend of yours?” he said.

Castiel nodded. “Her name is Charlie.”

“Was that her girlfriend with her?”

“Presumably. Unless it was just her latest conquest out for a casual boat ride.” He shrugged. “Last I saw her, she was sleeping her way through the Disney Princess pantheon, so I’m not entirely sure.”

“Yeah?” Dean said, smile crinkling his eyes and his nose. “She sounds like a lady after my own heart.”

Castiel snorted. “You probably would not appreciate her penchant for very fast rollercoasters,” he said. He poked at the pepper shaker with his fork, trying to distract himself from smiling. “But she has helped me through some difficult times.” He couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for the circumstances under which he had last left her. He should have called her. He speared the shrimp.

“She sounds like a cool person to have on your team.”

Castiel finally put the tortured shrimp in his mouth and chewed carefully. “My team,” he repeated dubiously.

“Yeah, like I got Sam and Jess and uh,” he furrowed his brow. “Jo and her mom and stuff. And you got Gabriel and Charlie and me.” He jerked his thumb toward his chest. “Your team. Your family or whatever.”

 _Oh_ , he thought. Oh. His brain started misfiring, short-circuiting unhelpfully. Dean was still talking, Castiel realized, words surfacing fuzzily over the weird haze that had overtaken his senses.

“And I guess Bobby too—you’d like Bobby. The Imagineer? He used to work maintenance with my dad—”

Castiel stood, knees locking beneath him without his consent.

He said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” loud and abrupt, and Dean just looked at him hard for a moment and pointed toward the restroom.

“Yeah, sure dude.”

The bathrooms were just as picturesque as the rest of the restaurant—as the rest of the park—with the same piped-in sounds of artificial nature magnified a thousand times by the small, tiled area. Above his head were the same painted stars, on the floor were living potted plants. They did absolutely nothing to lessen the impact of the panic when it came, a ball of burning hurt in the center of his chest that pushed its way outward and made it almost impossible to breathe. He fumbled his way into a bathroom stall and didn’t even manage to get the door locked and fully shut past the terror building in his chest.

Dean said _family_. He thought maybe Gabriel knew instinctively not to say that, because for the longest time family had meant _home_ and _safe_ and _brothers_ , but now family was synonymous with throwing you on your ass when you were in no way prepared to be self-sufficient. With being alone and afraid and left to hitchhike across the entire continental US, east coast to west, to be with the only person in your supposed _family_ that would even _speak_ with you anymore.

Dean said he was _family_ but Dean wasn’t that. He didn’t want Dean to be that. Castiel _liked_ Dean. He liked Dean a whole lot.

He tried to focus on the artificial sounds of nature, tried to find comfort in the looping tracks of insects and running water. It was nice to hear them, loud and tinny and pushing against his ears over the sound of his own breathing. He liked the artificiality of it suddenly, liked knowing that tomorrow these bugs would be making the same noises at the same time, and the moon would be in the exact same alignment in the sky, and the stars would be in the same places, frozen in one moment of perfection.

Dean ate, slept, and breathed Disneyland. Dean was beautiful and perfect. Dean was Prince Charming. Maybe Dean wasn’t real either. Maybe today and every day with Dean would be the eternal summers of his youth, where no one cared about his sexuality, and Michael and Lucifer still teased him about the fact that his name wasn’t on any of the souvenirs on the coast.

The thought calmed him. He realized he was on the floor. Everything smelled of bleach, his face was wet, the sides of his head hurt, which probably meant that he’d done some hair-pulling. Not unheard of when he flew into his stupid hysterics.

Dean wore big hiking boots, and Dean had bowed legs, and Castiel hadn’t managed to lock the door on his bathroom stall when he’d stumbled in. So here Dean was, like a vision, same as the day Castiel had met him. Dean dropped to his knees in front of Castiel, and when he went to reach for Cas’s head, he ducked away to rub at the tears he hadn’t even realized were there until a moment before.

Castiel didn’t give Dean the chance to speak first, to ask Castiel if he was okay or something else stupid. Before his breathing had evened out completely, he said, “I took a literary theory and philosophy course before I dropped out of college.” It was thick and clogged with the tears sheening his face.

Dean looked baffled, brows furrowed.

“Baby, what’s that got to do with—”

“We read an essay by a French literary theorist named Baudrillard,” Castiel interrupted, panic mounting at the sound of the—the pet name. His pet name, apparently. “Baudrillard posited that Disneyland was a den of ultimate evil.” Dean laughed out loud. Castiel flushed.

“Why the hell would anyone say that?”

Castiel wiped harder at his eyes, at his nose, desperate suddenly to be taken seriously. Dean seemed to realize the gravity and composed himself, sinking down to his butt with an _oomph_ and sitting cross-legged across from him.

“Baudrillard was a postmodernist.” A cricket chirped and Dean snorted.

“How the hell can anyone be _post_ modern?” Castiel pursed his lips, squinted, furrowed his brow. “Right, sorry. Bo-dre-are. Future man. Go on.”

“Not _futuristic._ Postmodernism is a literary movement concerned with self-referentiality and self-awareness of a piece of art. It has to do with the perceived breakdown of meaning inherent in the oversaturation of artistry and technology and knowledge.” Dean looked a little bit lost. Castiel sighed. “Baudrillard essentially posited that Disneyland was hyperreal—so distant from true meaning, from reality, that it had lost all meaning in the process. For instance, Main Street is a reproduction based on artifice, based on an ideal, unhinged from inherent truths. Disneyland is artifice empty of meaning.”

Dean seemed to really think about that, crisscrossed legs on the bathroom floor of the Blue Bayou restaurant.

“Like the sky outside,” Castiel continued. “The perfectly fake moon and stars. Like the characters walking around outside—reflections of a cartoon that is a reflection of a perception that is a reflection of a facet of reality. It’s not real. It’s idealized. Fake. Hyperreal.” He sighed. His face was tacky with shed tears, a dried film that cracked when he shifted his brow.

Dean ran a hand over his mouth. “Geez, you always get weird and introspective when you have a panic attack?”

Castiel’s nostrils flared. “It wasn’t a—”

“It _was_ , and you’re gonna explain to me why that went down, but first, I figured out what we gotta do tonight.” He reached out his hand, made grabby fingers when Castiel didn’t take it immediately. “C’mon.”

Castiel took it. It felt solid enough. Dean got to his feet, then hoisted Cas to his own and dusted off Castiel’s butt where he’d sat in footprints in front of the toilet.

“Can’t believe you sat down on the bathroom floor in Disneyland. Gross.” He made them disentangle their hands to wash them, and Dean sprayed Castiel with extra foamy-soap after and laughed when his hands sudsed so much it bubbled up the slopes of his forearms. Dean took his hand again afterward without a second thought.

“Did you pay the bill?” Castiel asked, patting absently at his pant leg, trying his best to keep from bumping into the other patrons in a room that was filled to the brim with parkgoers.

“Yeah, yeah. I gotcha, no problem.”

“It’s very expensive here, Dean.”

“I was gonna get you anyway. I was gonna order the cookie pirate boat and eat it all myself to justify it, but someone put the kibosh on that.”

They weaved their way between tables on their way out, Dean waving at waitresses as they went.

“You order a dessert every time we go out. It’s little wonder that Sam doesn’t like you to eat them.” Dean glanced back at him, unreadable expression on his face.

“Aw, man, not you too.” Dean winced as he nodded to the hostess and pushed open the exit door of the restaurant.

Outside, the sky was darkening, and the twilight was approaching the calm and dark of the restaurant, though without the unnatural stillness of the stagnant, indoor air.

“You know,” Dean said. “I get what you’re sayin’ about what’s-his-face, Cas. Like, somehow—somehow these reflections of the world we got here are—too perfect. Right? Unnatural.”

“To an extent. Their perfection does not reflect any state of reality that we are privy to. It is a bastardization of a bastardization of a—”

“Hey. Kids,” Dean said.

“Please. Bastardization is hardly a swear word, Dean,” he said. It wasn’t until he lost that remaining, niggling thread of panic enough to be annoyed that he realized he was holding hands with Dean in New Orleans Square and urgently fought to disentangle them, like Dean was attached to one of those hand buzzers that they sold in Toon Town. Dean didn’t fight him, didn’t even look annoyed, just continued making his stubborn way around the waterfront, away from New Orleans Square, glancing back every once in a while to make sure that Cas was still following. The path felt too familiar, naggingly so, but Castiel was numb enough that he didn’t even realize where Dean was taking him until It’s a Small World was about a hundred paces ahead of them, big and white and glowing in the twilight.

“Oh no you don’t,” Castiel said, backtracking.

“Aw, c’mon Cas,” he pleaded. “You been workin’ this joint for weeks now and you never even been on the,” he lowered his voice, mindful of the kids swarming around their feet, “goddamn ride. Doesn’t that make you feel a little bit—dirty?”

“Doesn’t it make you ‘feel a little bit dirty’ to know that you are one of the only human beings alive that likes this ride?” he countered sourly. Dean laughed.

“Dude, you’re such a drama queen. There are tons of people who love this ride. Sammy and his girlfriend love the crap out of it. Sammy’s such a pansy, he’s usually _crying_ by minute nine—”

Castiel cut him off with a groan. “Nine _minutes_.”

“I know I told you this before,” he said. “Shit’s like fifteen minutes total.”

“I _know_ how long it is, Dean. I have to see the traumatized faces of its victims when they come out of the ride.”

Dean continued as if he hadn’t heard him. “It’s one of the longest rides in the park.” Castiel groaned again, turning, but Dean caught him by the wrist. His hand was very cold where they hadn’t been tethered, a little pale against the healthy tan of Castiel’s forearm. “Doesn’t a nice, slow boat ride sound like a good plan? It might help you calm down.”

“No,” Castiel said petulantly. “It sounds awful. I want to ride Space Mountain. We never ride what _I_ want to ride.”

Dean’s eyes flickered over his face. “Baby, I—I can’t ride Space Mountain,” he said under his breath, a little pained. Castiel didn’t have it in him to pick apart Dean’s word choice to his face, but he heard it—the “can’t” rather than a “won’t” or “don’t want to.” It made him thank that maybe there was more to it than just not liking the fast rides—made him think that maybe Dean was _scared_.

“I want to ride Big Thunder,” he said, warbly. “Or the Matterhorn.” _I want to fly._ “If you won’t,” he said, “If you ‘ _can’t_.’” Sniggering scare quotes. “I’ll go on my own.”

“Oh shut up, you won’t either.” Dean didn’t lose his hold on his wrist and he moved in closer, shuffling until he was a wall of good-smelling leather behind him. “We’re gonna ride It’s a Small World together and have us a little moment of quiet introspection.”

So long as Castiel was responding like an ornery six-year-old, he figured he might as well roll with it. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Dean chuckled. “Naw, I’m not. But you like riding things with me, right? I made sure to condition you that way with the handie. I’m your—”

“— _Please_ don’t say we’re family,” Cas said sharply.

Dean gave him an incredulous look.

“Was gonna say boyfriend, but okay Captain.”

Almost without Castiel having noticed, they were already moving toward the ride, winding their way through the queue with Dean’s cold hand holding tight on his arm. He told himself he wasn’t pulling away because his own skin was slowly warming Dean’s fingers through, but he knew that Dean had called his bluff. He wasn’t going to pull away. He wanted to keep Dean warm.

When they reached the front of the queue, the attending leader was Castiel’s long-suffering companion—the one who picked up most of the slack as Castiel stewed and wallowed and dawdled his way through his shift. He took one look at the two of them together, and his lip curled in disgust. Castiel felt his heart rate picking all over again.

“I see the two of you finally stopped dancing around one another long enough to ruin my day even on your evening off.”

And then he was almost vibrating with anxiety again, even with Dean’s steadying hand on his arm, but Dean must’ve said something or death-glared something to make him contrite, because he shut up, and they got a whole pink boat all to themselves despite the substantial line of people behind them. Or maybe Uriel just didn’t want to inflict their behavior on anyone else.

They sat right in the middle row so it wouldn’t be frontloaded or backloaded, and they scrunched in together like they had on Pirates of the Caribbean so it wouldn’t tip this way or that. Pirates of the Caribbean had just gotten new boats a few years ago, but they always had to be more careful loading It’s a Small World, because the little multi-colored nightmares just loved to bottom out on them, and it was the bane of the unloader’s existence to dive into the ride’s seedy, kaleidoscopic underbelly to rescue the stranded riders.

The boat hit a bump, scraped the bottom with a long, loud, grating sound that vibrated through his bones like nails on a chalkboard.

“Relaxing boat ride my—”

“Hey,” Dean inclined his head toward the people one boat-length ahead of them, where two little kids were bobbing along with the water, pretending to fight with lightsabers they’d no doubt gotten from Tomorrowland’s greedy Star Tours gift shop. Castiel rolled his eyes.

The omnipresent music started tinkling into their boat one innocuous note at a time.

“This is torture,” he grumbled.  He glanced over at Dean, and he was almost pissed off by the degree of insouciant, unperturbed calm on his face. Their boat floated serenely through a green landscape, topiaries and flowers and grass. Dean slung his arm over the back of the seat until the smell of leather surrounded him again.

“We’re gonna start taking on water here in a sec if you don’t stop that,” Dean said, gesturing Castiel’s leg, which was bouncing spastically, completely without his consent. The boats were shallow enough that their knees were a little closer to their faces than was completely comfortable. Castiel stopped, grumbling under his breath. Dean pulled him in closer by the arm he had around his neck, squeezing briefly at his shoulder.

There was a moment of silence as they descended into the mouth of the ride, colors flaring around them as children babbled in front of them and behind them.

The tinkling hints of music finally solidified into children’s voices.

Castiel bit his lip, put his hand on Dean’s leg. The panic was still thrumming under his skin. It had only just receded under the scent of leather, like it had for Gabriel’s lullaby, but it was resurfacing into just an uncomfortable enough edge that he felt like being an idiot.

“You know,” he said, a little stilted. “I can think of another way we could catch some relaxation. It _is_ the longest ride in the park.” He trailed off suggestively. Dean looked down at him in blatant disbelief.

“We didn’t exactly need the longest ride in the park last time, did we bright eyes?”

Castiel went red, put his hand back in his own lap. The singing children violated his senses now that no distraction was imminent.

Dean sighed. “Have you seen how bright it is in here? I am literally looking at three children as we speak. I may be a wildly bad influence on you and a shameless indulgent, but some things are sacred.”

Castiel snorted. “Right. Sacred.” He tipped his head pointedly toward a wide-eyed doll with a creepy, plaster smile. It was staring uncannily, mechanical blinking movements that would have been audible were it not for the blaring soundtrack. It had a yellow, yellow wig, and it was rocking manically back and forth as it sang a Swedish version of the same damned song from the book it held in front of its face.

“Yeah,” Dean said, a little harshly, more harshly than Castiel was used to. “Sacred. Just— _actually_ listen for a sec.” As if sensing Dean’s agitation, their pink boat hit a little eddy and rocked, just gently, from side to side. Water lapped up against the sides of the boat in flickering little tongues that reflected the gaudy spew of color all around them.

He did—listen. The Swedish faded into an instrumental version of the song as they floated further into what was presumably Europe and tiny British guards in tall, wooly caps trumpeted it at them from a skewed, crooked version of some English palace. They moved through Europe, and Castiel could feel the tightly-wound form of Dean at his side as his eyes snapped from little doll to little doll, taking in the costumes he’d seen a thousand times before. Castiel caught him when Dean looked down at him, probably to see if he was enjoying himself. If he’d changed his mind. He huffed through his nose when Castiel knew he looked nothing but perturbed.

“You’re always—you never want to sit back and get invested in anything. Unless there’s an orgasm involved. It’s either all at once or not at all with you.” Dean reached up to rub at his nose. They drifted past the Eiffel Tower and a row of French cancan dancers, pretty and pink with massive feathers on their heads. “I like you. So much. A lot. You had a conniption fit when I said ‘family’ earlier—” Castiel swallowed. A dancer in a big ruffled dress played along to the song with castanets to his left. “But you’re—for me, you’re.” He looked to the other side of the room, a doll with a kilt and bagpipes. Dean’s Adam’s apple bobbed against the shamrock-green background just past the Scotsman. “But I just don’t get why it’s so tough for you to sit back and just be happy. That’s what Disneyland is all about, dude.”

Castiel’s mind just—whited out. Entirely. The music fuzzed in and out like static between his ears. The little dolls danced in circles on his periphery. Dean held tight to his side. He didn’t know how to articulate what he was thinking, what he was feeling, except that his heart felt like it was beating slower than normal, as opposed to the usual quick rate it pick up when he was having a panic attack.

“It’s—” he said. “I’m.”

They drifted through India. Women with swiveling heads and hips danced in front of the Taj Mahal. In the distance, way out ahead in front of them, warbling voices were singing that same song in Japanese. One culture bled into the next in some surreal, plastic-covered world tour. Dean waited silently.

“It’s not what it should be. I’m not where I should be,” he said hopelessly, shoulders drooping. It was the best he could articulate. A panda bear smiled at him encouragingly as they passed. Dean furrowed his brow.

“What are you _supposed_ to be doing?” he said. “What are any of us _supposed_ to be doing?”

“Don’t wax philosophical at me,” Castiel groused.

“You were the one who brought up _literary theory_ when you were huddled on the floor of a Disneyland bathroom earlier,” he sniped. “And it’s an honest question. Are you not supposed to be on a date with me right now? Am I not supposed to like you?”

Africa now. Blue lions and pink giraffes and little puppets in patterned skirts. In the background, dated depictions of tiny grass-roofed huts. Throughout it all, hyenas laughed eerily, manically, and it echoed all around them.

“No,” he said on an explosive exhale. “I’m _not_. You were never even meant to look at me standing outside that window. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s not how it should be.”

“It doesn’t _have_ to make any sense!”

“Don’t you feed me some garbage line about _love at first sight_ not making sense, or _Disney magic_ not making sense, because that bullshit doesn’t exist.”

Dean didn’t even bother to look at the other boat with the children at Castiel’s unfortunate slip.

“I wasn’t gonna. I was gonna ask—who says that’s not how it should be?”

Castiel blinked. “What?”

“Who the fuck,” he spared a flick of his eyes for the boat ahead of them this time. No one turned around. They were just watching sedately as a signgreeted them with _Buenos Dias!_ and the puppets started singing in Spanish. “Who the _fuck_ says that’s not how it should be? That you’re not allowed to be happy?”

Years of priming for this situation had trained Castiel to say _God_ to these questions. To any of the bigger questions, really. God told him he was a heathen for wanting men, God told that he should be making more of the life he’d been given, God told him he should be more subservient. Be more malleable.

But God hadn’t told him he was worthless without his college degree. God hadn’t told him to _suck it up and turn down the old sad-sap routine._ God hadn’t told him to work for his father at the bank. God hadn’t tried to set him up in a business relationship with Daphne, the quiet and respectable girl from a wealthy family whom he knew from first encounter he would be expected to marry. That was his parents.

But his parents weren’t around anymore either. It was just him. Him and Gabriel.

And _Gabriel_ certainly wasn’t telling him how to live his life.

Castiel chafed his hands together, bounced his legs in such a way that made the whole little boat bounce.

They passed by some mermaids also singing the song. It bubbled like they were underwater. It was kind of cute.

“The guy you were talking about? He’s just another fuckin’ guy telling me not to enjoy something that I love.” Dean swept a hand over his face. They passed a green-sequined crocodile underneath a tiny parasol. “And why the hell does he get to tell me that this isn’t real?” Dean gestured to the boat in front of them, where the two boys had foregone tussling good-naturedly to staring at the cowboys that surfaced in American Midwest. “That their feelings aren’t real? That they aren’t really happy?”

Castiel looked at them too, and his mind went to every child Dean had ever helped, had ever smiled at. Every life he’d ever touched in whatever limited capacity he could.

“And Christ—this ride isn’t real. But isn’t it a nice message?” he said. “Isn’t it a nice dream?”

They’d entered what Castiel could only assume was the final room, big and vaulted and _white_ , just like the front of the ride. All the children, all the colors, all the nationalities, were all decked out in _white_ now, and the hula dancers were next to the bagpipe players were next to the African natives were next to the cancan dancers in their big white feathers. They were all singing the same song, just like they had been all along.

And maybe, one or two of those little puppets were gay. Or—or _depressed_. Or—

That was stupid, wasn’t it? It was.

Dean seemed to know what he was thinking, though. He bumped Castiel with his shoulder just as they drifted underneath the gilded _Farewell!_ banner, and he smiled as the music tapered into the distant echoes that Castiel could always hear from the very front of the ride. Castiel’s legs felt numb, wavery, liquefied.

“It’s a nice message,” Castiel said to a penguin topiary, not able to look at Dean yet. “It is.”

“Do you still hate It’s a Small World, Cas?” Dean prodded, jabbing him in the ribs. Castiel swatted his hand away half-heartedly.

“Yes,” he said stubbornly.

 Dean blew out his lips in a raspberry. When the boat jerked to a stop at unload, Uriel was there pointedly _not_ looking at them with his lip tucked up in a grimace. Castiel climbed out of the boat, then helped Dean out himself, reaching back for Dean’s hand, warmer from being right up against Castiel’s side the whole ride.

As they meandered through the exit queue, Castiel realized that he hadn’t felt one twinge of panic from Uriel’s blatant response.

“I might not hate it as much as I did before,” Castiel said. “But don’t expect me to ride it again for a few more months at _least_.”

Dean took his hand and squeezed.

* * *

“Are you really going to make me keep my eyes shut _all the way_ through California Adventure?”

Dean’s hands were warm and dry over his face, chafing on the tops of his eyelids as Dean took wide steps behind him and ushered him through the crowded park. He was rasping a little bit in Castiel’s ear, high in his throat, and the air that gusted over Cas’s cheek and ear was sweet like he’d just eaten something sugary. He could hear people chattering around them, could hear laughter and street vendors. He could hear when they passed the big fountain right at the very entrance of the park as water splattered heavily over pavement. He could smell the big bakery at the front of the park, could smell the artificial orange smell that they piped in here by the gallon.

“Not all the way through,” he said. “It’s not actually that far.”

They probably looked ridiculous, Dean plastered to his back and whispering in his ear, but he hadn’t been lying, there really wasn’t a long way to go, and just a few uncomfortable moments later, Dean was pulling his hand away from his eyelids, letting in the streaming sun as it reflected brightly off the red rock of the artificial canyons around him. Castiel blinked hard against the onslaught.

Directly in front of him, there stood a big, plaster model of what must be a _Cars_ character, from the Pixar franchise. It was big, and long, and black, with a devilish smile and bright green LCD eyes that moved and blinked like it was a sentient creature. It was all hard lines and angles, and it stood stationery just in front of a ridiculous giant traffic cone.

Dean dove around his back and patted it on the hood like a treasure, fond smile on his face. “Isn’t she awesome?”

“She?” Dean looking stricken, patting the top of the car consolingly, like maybe it was offended.

“Yeah. She. She’s my Baby.”

He leaned over and planted a kiss right on the top of it. Castiel stuck out his tongue.

“I’m a bit confused as to your relationship with the fictional car.”

“Baby’s not fictional,” Dean said. “Bobby—my Uncle Bobby—he’s an Imagineer. He designed like half this place.” Dean waved an arm vaguely around the entire area of the park, which was, structurally, very impressive. There was an illusion of vastness in the distant red rocks, like the canyon around them stretched on forever. “Baby was my car.” Dean shook himself, like a dog trying to dry . “My dad’s car. Didn’t I tell you he was a mechanic? Cars were his passion. But he got stuck here.” Dean scratched his head awkwardly. “Bobby built this after Dad crashed the real one into a tree. S’nice to be able to come visit her.”

Dean put a hand on the roof of the car, looked at it with an expression of genuine fondness. Castiel felt like he was being introduced to another member of Dean’s family. So he did the only thing he could do.

“Hello, Baby,” he said.

Dean smiled.

* * *

It was the beginning of November, and Castiel got off his shift feeling a little bit— _chipper_. For the first time since he’d started working at It’s a Small World, the big clock tower hadn’t felt like it was ticking his life away. He knew he was meeting Dean after work, and Dean was going to take him on a ride he didn’t want to ride (but might end up liking anyway), and they were going to eat dinner somewhere nice, and Castiel didn’t have to feel like he was missing out on his own life for a whole nother evening.

But when Dean met him, he wasn’t exactly himself. His smile wasn’t right, and his laugh was just a few seconds—off. He snapped at Castiel. He was irritable. He didn’t want any _sweets_ , for god’s sake.

He took him on the Winnie the Pooh ride, almost with an air of duty about him. The ride choice made Castiel scowl, but Dean didn’t deflect it with the same grace he usually did; they didn’t play the same will-I-won’t-I game. He just got them into their giant honey pot and sat next to him, hands drawn into the long sleeves of his jacket.

It was a black light ride. Dean had taken him on a couple before, and the only thing he could actively recall was being legitimately terrified in Snow White’s Scary Adventures a week or so ago, when the wicked queen had turned around from her mirror and leered her ugly face right into his. Dean had laughed prettymuch through the entire rest of the ride, right out the back door, until he was howling over a garbage can outside and Cas was tapping his foot impatiently. That, and the fact that there had been a glowing white _spot_ on the sleeve of Dean’s leather jacket when they’d ridden Peter Pan’s Flight, and Castiel had a sneaking suspicion that it was his doing—not that he had told Dean.

Dean was cold again, always seemed to be, and Castiel butted up beside him as they descended into the belly of the ride, and suddenly it was _Windsssday_ , and they were buffeted on all sides by unnatural gusts.

“There wasn’t a gopher in the original A.A. Milne books,” Castiel mused, mostly to himself, uncomfortable with the silence. “Nor in any of the cartoons I remember…” Dean cleared his throat. It was hard to hear him over the artificial sound of the blustery day.

“They introduced him in one of the ‘60s cartoons, but they didn’t really flesh him out until the show in the nineties. ‘The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.’I never really liked him all that much.”

“I see. What emotion did he represent?” Castiel said, idly taking in the next room, a day when everything had flooded, and the entire 100 Acre Wood was underneath a skiff of gently flowing water and swirling lily pads.

“I—what?” Dean said.

“Oh. You know. The theory is that the characters in the books and movies that I saw were meant to dissect a child’s psyche into digestible pieces so that children could more easily understand their own emotions.” Castiel pointed at each of the characters in turn as they passed them. “Piglet was fear.” Piglet _oh d-d-dear_ ed his way in front of their honeypot train, waiting to be saved. “Tigger was happiness, excitement. Enthusiasm. Bravery.” Tigger, tail wrapped around a tree, reached for Piglet. “Rabbit was anger. Annoyance. Anxiety.” Rabbit, brows perpetually furrowed, floated by in an overturned umbrella. “Roo was childhood in essence. Curiosity and a desire for independence. And his mother was the other side of that, maternity in essence. Pooh was—uh.”

Pooh passed, ass-over-teakettle inside another honeypot.

“A raging fuckwit?” Dean said.

Castiel snorted. “Contentment, I think. Contemplativeness. Childlike wonder and desire.”

They passed by the last character on their way into the next room. He was trying in vain to keep ahold of his tail in the incoming tides of the flood.

“And everyone knows what Eeyore is,” Castiel continued. Dean looked at the character with squinted eyes, and even in the black light, Castiel was able to see the dark bags under his eyes, like the ones he’d seen there so long ago. He hadn’t seen them since he was drawing the hunter from Tarzan and he had the business end of a gun pointed right in his face. Dean rubbed at his chest under his jacket subconsciously.

“Sadness,” Dean said. Castiel nodded.

“We’re meant to understand that we can—we can have all of them. At any time. It legitimizes children’s feelings.”

“Christ.” Dean ran a hand over his tired eyes. “You’re—y’know, every once in a while, you remind me that all I do for a livin’ is doodle like a show pony all day. I memorized frame rates and learned my basic shapes and primary colors, and now I just mix ‘em all together for eight hours a day and go home.” He finished on a grumble, “And I only get to do _that_ much ‘cause of my parents.”

“What?” Castiel said, baffled. “What on earth are you talking about?”

They cascaded into some surreal dreamscape on the next part of the ride, following Pooh Bear’s flying projection down a long hallway and into some hellish nightmare room filled with _Heffalumps_ and _Woozels_.

“Sam’s such a little prick. He’s always telling me—that the only reason I stay is ‘cause I don’t know any different. What does _he_ know, right?” Dean bit it out, but Castiel could hear in the way that it sounded like he was talking past a ball in the back of his throat that he believed in what he was saying.

“A while ago,” Dean continued before Castiel could respond, “You said to me that you didn’t think you were much good at anything. But Christ, you’re so smart. Especially about—about books. You pick up on shit so quick.” He snapped his fingers sharply— _like that_. “Sometimes I feel like a wet match in dark room next to you, you know?”

“What—what on earth are you talking about?” he repeated because it was all he could think to say. He felt like Dean was speaking a foreign language. “You’re brilliant,” he said honestly.

Dean actually _laughed_ at that one, face a hurt grimace.

“A grown man knowin’ every frame of _Beauty and the Beast_ by heart ain’t genius Cas,” he said. “In fact, it’s kind of pathetic.”

“It’s— _amazing,_ Dean,” he said. It was the first time he’d said it. It felt wrong. “You’re amazing.”

They left the strange dreamscape of the Heffalumps and Woozels, and Dean went quiet along with the ride. Pooh Bear was in another honey pot, and it made Dean laugh another hard, tight burst of a laugh.

“Sorry. Sorry, I’m sorry.” He rubbed the denim on his thighs hard, his short nails making _zip zip zip_ noises along with the ride’s soundtrack. “It’s—isn’t is weird how some of them are stuffed, but some of them are real animals?” he deflected. He bit his lip, rubbed so hard he knocked right into Castiel and apologized again.

Castiel realized, maybe for the first time, that Dean could be _sad_. Insecure. And it hit him harder than it should have. It seemed silly in hindsight, that he’d known Dean for months, had been watching him longer, and he was only just now seeing that Dean wasn’t the empty _Prince Charming_ persona he liked to project. That he had simple human emotions just like everybody else. Apparently, Castiel’s Winnie the Pooh education had failed him.

“Don’t be sorry,” Castiel said. “You told me before that I was allowed to be happy. But you. Please. You don’t have to be—be Tigger all the time.”

Dean chuckled, grabbing Castiel by the opposite shoulder, shaking him. “Aw, c’mon. Us Tiggers gotta keep it up for all the Eeyores in our lives, right?”

Castiel frowned, looked down to the unnatural bright of his palms in the blacklight, down to the blue veins running underneath his skin.

“Shit, I didn’t mean it like _that_ —”

“No,” Cas said. “You’re right. I am—I am Eeyore all the time. Doesn’t it wear on you? That I’m at wit’s end all the time, that I’m half a thought away from losing my mind at any given point in time?” The classic _I don’t deserve you_ was like rainfall in the back of his mind at this point, distant and familiar. He hardly noticed it anymore, but he would’ve felt its absence acutely if it were to stop. His mind was flooded like the room they’d been in earlier, thoughts floating like lily pads in the eddies of anxiety.

He didn’t want to be that.

They passed by the whole group having a birthday party on their way back into the outside world. Piglet and Eeyore and Pooh and Tigger all celebrating together.

“You just gotta—see someone, baby. Get that tail on with somethin’ better than a thumb tack.” He reached over to rap his knuckles against Castiel’s head, just softly, and Castiel reached up after him to take Dean’s hand in his own, holding it there. They sat in silence for a moment, waiting their turn to unload from the ride in the brightness of the afternoon outside. Dean’s skin was so pale it was almost translucent where it was cradled in his palms, and when he looked up, the skin on his face was the same, white and smattered with layers of freckles. It makes the green in his eyes stand out.

“I’m sorry. That I haven’t allowed you to be Eeyore.”

Dean held his eye intently, so it was a surprise when he reached up with his other hand, and Castiel felt the light touch of his rough fingers, just under his eye.

“Both of us gotta aim to be more Pooh-like, huh? He is pretty zen.”

This was the part where people normally kissed, Castiel thought, still looking into Dean’s eyes.

“I _could_ use a smackeral of something sweet,” Castiel deadpanned instead, and Dean just _busted_ out laughing, face cracked in half, hands over his gut.

“Shit. Shit dude, did you seriously just say ‘smackeral’ in your serious business voice?” The cart jerked the rest of the way into the station, and two people were waiting to take their place in the honeycomb compartment, but Dean was still laughing too much to notice. Castiel pushed at him to get his ass out of the beehive, but Dean just lowered his voice a couple octaves, and said, “‘Smackeral,’” in a rusted, nasally imitation of Cas.

And it was the happiest he’d seen Dean all day, so the unloader just had to wait a moment while the two of them got their shit together. Because Dean didn’t have to be happy all the time for Castiel, not anymore. But Castiel certainly liked it when he was.

* * *

_True love’s first kiss_ was a classic Disney trope, a big bolt of electric meaning that touching lips apparently injected into a relationship. Hell, the very first movie Disney had ever made, it had a hand in bringing someone back from being mostly dead.

It was funny, because Dean had given him a handjob in the Haunted Mansion, but they’d never kissed. He wondered if there was such a thing as true love’s first handjob. True love’s first blowjob.

“True love’s first penetrative sex,” Dean said when Castiel posited the idea to him ponderously. “I dunno man, I feel like there should be levels to this, like, if true love’s first kiss can bring someone back from a sleep like death, maybe true-love’s-first-base is like the Heimlich maneuver. Or, uh, you know, true love’s first anal is enough to bring back someone who’s full on dead.” Dean stuck out his tongue. “But then you get all kinds of consent issues, so I can see why Disney’s never dealt with that.”

“You sound like Charlie,” Castiel said fondly.

“Good. Charlie’s mother clearly didn’t raise her to be a dickbag.”

“Honestly, I’m more concerned with the, uh, necrophilia implications of this theory.”

“Yeah, yuck. Let’s hope that one never makes it to the silver screen.”

He stared at Dean. Mentally forced himself to blink when he knew he’d been looking too long.

He hadn’t kissed Dean yet, but conversations like that made it seem as if it wouldn’t be such a big deal if he did. Films made it seem like there would be world-altering changes that came from a kiss with someone like Dean, someone with whom he was so thoroughly infatuated. But he was starting to realize that if he kissed Dean now, it wouldn’t really change much of anything. They would be the same people, they would be doing the same things, Dean would still want to make him ride It’s a Small World, except now kissing would be a thing that they did in addition to handjobs on classic Disney attractions.

Slow, languorous kissing. It sounded nice.

They took a ride on the Mark Twain Riverboat in preparation for the fireworks shooting off over the river. Dean told him that they let you _drive_ the riverboat if you asked the captain nicely, and it was apparently one of the things he’d never gotten to do. He was ecstatic. Castiel found himself being happy too. Couldn’t even help himself, it was just a feeling that pulled out of him.

This was his chance.

Dean used his leather jacket to try and hide it, but Castiel didn’t miss the way he kept his hand over his chest, kept knuckling his sternum hard—the way he looked pale and drawn even as he took the big wheel of the ship in his hands and smiled around a bend in the river. The leather jacket was such a fixed presence, had always been there even on the coldest days, and Castiel tried to imagine Snow White wearing it while Prince Charming bent over her and pecked her on the lips, because Dean had said, way back in the very beginning, that he was more than willing to be the princess.

They watched fireworks at the bow of the riverboat. It was hopelessly romantic, and Castiel held shaking hands clenched above the ship’s guardrail, because he could initiate it, and in the story of their romance, that had begun with a picturesque first meeting, that had come straight out of a Disney film, it would be prudent that their first kiss be similarly romantic. He kept leaning forward and leaning back, sweating into his hairline and his palms and down the back of his pants.

“You know Disney spends almost as much on explosives as the US military?” Dean asked, leaning hard on the railing himself, like he was trying to keep himself upright and oriented. He was sweating a little bit too, the sheen of it reflecting in the climactic spray of fireworks on the stars above them. Castiel wondered if Dean wasn’t planning the same thing, if Dean wasn’t sweating and suffering because of the same inclination as Castiel, and would end up in a comedy where they both leaned forward and bumped noses and laughed and then had their first, for real, ground-breaking kiss.

Castiel had never really noticed how _loud_ fireworks were until now. Big crackling booms that seemed to rock the boat he was standing on, that made him jump a little every time another one flowered exuberantly to life over their heads. He wondered if Dean was nervous. But that didn’t really suit him. Did it?

Castiel tapped his fingers hard, an agitated staccato on the metal railing.

“I bet they keep the fireworks people in _business_ , dude.” Dean said. “Can you imagine doing this every day? Most towns can’t even afford to do this once a _year_ for the Fourth of July.” Dean cleared his throat, then coughed drily from high in his chest, like he was trying to get something out that wouldn’t budge.

“Are you alright?” Castiel asked.

Dean looked at him like he was startled. “Fine, Cas,” he said dismissively, little twitch of a smile on his face.

Next to them, another couple approached to lean dreamily against the railing. A pretty, petite brunette that was arm and arm with a handsome fellow around Castiel’s age. When Castiel looked over, the male half of the couple had reached across her waist to pull her even closer, pressing a kiss to her temple. Next to him, Dean picked up on his explosives thread again.

“You know they pretty much revolutionized the technology so they could keep throwing this shit up in the air every day. They made the electronic launching system so they could put it to music, and they revamped it so that people wouldn’t get smoked out down in the park.” He coughed again, and his hand disappeared up under his jacket, rubbing in a circular motion that lifted his coat like his heart was beating out of his chest.

Castiel was so worked up that it took him a moment to realize that the man next to him was down on one knee in front of his girlfriend, and she had her hand up under her jacket too, right over her own heart.

Castiel said, “Are you fucking _kidding_ me,” under his breath, and Dean smacked him with the back of his hand, right on his upper arm. It was a weak smack, even considering he probably didn’t mean it in the first place.

“Aw, c’mon dude, let ‘em have their moment.”

He let them have their moment, only a little bit bitter that they only _had_ it because they had stolen it from _him_. Dean congratulated them when the man took his feet again, and Castiel managed to look interested when the woman showed him her big, diamond-studded ring.

The fireworks show ended without any more to-do, and that was that. He’d missed his chance.

He’d missed his _every_ chance. Which wasn’t really surprising, not for him.

That couldn’t be it though. He walked slowly alongside Dean toward the exit, and Dean’s feet in his big heavy boots made big, hollow _galumph, galumph, galumph_ noises as they dragged over the deck of the ship. He looked exhausted, and Castiel could feel the panic building in his chest, filling it with cement, because he was watching Dean get bored of his inadequacies right before his very eyes. He said let them have their moment, but Dean deserved his too.   

As they were leaving the boat, perched on the wide wooden gangplank they’d used to board, people streaming around them, Castiel said, “Let’s go somewhere private,” at the same time Dean said, “I think I really need to go home now.” The panic that had been there before turned into full-on, heart-pounding _terror_. Dean was leaving because of _him_ because he wasn’t _good_ enough or _smart_ enough or fast enough to advance the relationship.

So he took Dean’s slack jaw in his, felt his heartbeat thumping strangely underneath his skin, and smacked a kiss to his lips.

Dean’s lips were very cold. He moved against Castiel halfheartedly, but it almost felt as if Cas was trying to manipulate plastic. He plowed determinedly onward for a moment, holding Dean’s head captive between his two hands, clutching his cheeks so hard he’d probably left clawing fingernail marks down the side of his face. He licked the seam of Dean’s rubbery lips just about the time they stopped moving completely, then he pulled back before he could get any farther, before Dean could outright reject him. When he did, Dean clutched at his own chest with one hand and Castiel’s chest with the other.

He said, “Feel funny, Cas. World’s goin’ a little pink elephants on me.” He patted Castiel’s pectorals absently, a barely there pressure that touched at all the knots in his muscles and did nothing to slow the quick, panicked flutter of his breathing. “Should call Sam.”

Then he hit his knees and vomited on the boardwalk.

Castiel fell too, a hand on his leather-clad shoulder, trying to help him or pull him to his feet or—something. Trying not to panic more than he already was. Trying not to think _of course your kiss would have the opposite effect on anyone you touch. You sent them back to the grave, you kill people with your kiss, you turn them into beasts, it’s no wonder your parents can’t stand the sight of you_. Trying not to let every bad thought that Dean had washed away with his very existence back into his heart.

The couple from the bow of the boat ride stood beside him, neatly sidestepping Dean’s puddle of vomit on the boardwalk as the fiancé’s ring glistened in a nearby streetlight. He could hear, distantly, as one of them asked if he needed them to call for help.

“Dean,” Castiel said urgently.

Dean’s voice was so soft, he almost couldn’t make it out above the buzz in his own ears. “Look out, look out—”

“Dean!” His voice cracked.

“Pink elephants on parade, here they come,” he mumbled, vomit dribbling down his chin, and Castiel had him by the shoulders, gripping him hard to keep him upright, when a no-nonsense Disney employee dressed in a pastel-blue Frontierland frock tapped him smartly on the shoulder.

Disney employees were taught to respond to emergencies _fast_ , and they must have caught the attention of at least five when Dean went down, because there they all were, mostly people dressed like they had come straight out of the old west, with first aid supplies and a wheelchair and a portable defibrillator in tow. They tried to get Castiel to back off, and he said something like, “I work here too!” before they managed to get him on his feet and out of the way.

They took Dean away. It was serious enough that he needed a doctor, that they jogged after they got him in the wheelchair and he mumbled about pink elephants, that they jogged to a place where he could best be picked up by an ambulance rather than to the medical bay in the park. Castiel trailed behind them, Dean’s phone in his hand, finger ready to dial Sam’s number.

They didn’t let him ride in the ambulance, and Sam’s voice on the other end of the line did nothing to reassure him, there and gone as soon as he heard which hospital Dean was going to. The only thing he had left was the gentle swell of the omnipresent music in the background, instrumental pieces of _When You Wish Upon a Star_ that played as the crowd dispersed at the end of the show at Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and that grew softer and softer until they just faded away altogether.

* * *

It was almost an hour before Castiel wrangled a ride from Charlie’s girlfriend Dorothy because Gabriel was never around when Castiel actually _needed_ him, and everyone else seemed to be giving him a wide berth, like they’d realized what had happened to Dean on his watch. Like they had realized that it was his fault.

Charlie sat with Dorothy in the front seat leaving Castiel shadowed in the back, and he didn’t talk all the way there, shaking with anxiety down to his toes. When they pulled up at the curb, Castiel got out, but Charlie stopped him to pat his head and leave a smudge of a kiss on his cheek that Castiel couldn’t be bothered to shy away from.

Inside, Dean’s story was the exposition of an old Disney movie, back when they still began films with footage of real books and pages they turned with fishing wire. Castiel was used to kinetic movement around Dean, animated life, but Sam in the waiting room was a stone-still silhouette against pastel floral wallpaper and overflowing magazine racks.

He was still immaculate in his Prince Adam costume. Character actors’ hair was almost plastered into place to fight humidity and sweat and questing fingers, and, apparently, the grief that was all over Sam’s face, etched into the hard lines of his jaw. His cheeks were rosy—the make-up, Cas supposed, because if the pallor of the skin at his wrists, on his forehead was any indication, he was actually deathly pale. On the other side of the waiting room, three children were watching _Aladdin_ on a big television affixed to the wall and solemnly scooting little waiting room toys around on the carpet. Every once in a while, one of them would look back to where Sam had his head bowed, eyes full of wonder. A little ways away from them, there was a man filling out forms with a hard, distraught look of concentration on his face.

“Sam.”

Castiel realized that there was a whole sprawling confession on the tip of his tongue just waiting to come out, no matter how illogical it might’ve been. Castiel knew that he hadn’t put Dean here, just like he had known that the sword in the center of Fantasyland could come out of the stone for just about anybody if the magician bothered to flip the switch. But at the same time—he wanted to say that he was the cause of every bad thing that would ever happen to Dean on his watch.

These were old thoughts. Comfortable thoughts. They were easier than the recent bouts of self-esteem that had been invading, the shooting little jabs of happiness that made him feel like hope was something he deserved.

 _I kissed your brother and he collapsed_ , he wanted to say, a leaden weight off his chest. _I kissed your brother and he turned into a Beast_.

“Maybe it’s just California. Maybe it’s just Anaheim,” Sam cut into his thoughts, eyes still on the ground, “but they’re always playing Disney movies. Always. In the waiting rooms at hospitals. In the waiting rooms at the specialists’ offices. In the patient rooms. In the pediatric wards. In the recovery rooms. Always. The same fucking things, over and over and over again. You’re in and out of them often enough, sooner or later, you’ll have the whole goddamn lineup memorized.”

Castiel spared a glance for the kids back on a rug at Sam’s words, some strange, protective instinct that Dean had somehow managed to instill in him awakening, but they still weren’t paying attention.

“Sam.” Sam looked at him for the first time and unlaced his hands from where they had been connected between his legs. He unslouched, bringing himself up to a more respectable height, and the whole thing was like a series of sequential snapshots, until Sam was looking at him, unflinching.

“Maybe I want to watch the fucking _news_ while my brother’s in surgery again, y’know?” Sam said, voice finding volume in the small room. “Maybe I want to watch something where everything _doesn’t_ turn out okay in the end. Maybe I want to watch something realistic!” The kids were looking at the both of them now, three sets of eyes peeking up over the back of a well-worn black couch. On the screen behind them, in was near the end of the movie, and Aladdin and his monkey were frigid with cold in some arctic climate. “Gimme terrorism and disease and war any day. Christ.”

“Um,” Castiel said. “Dean’s in surgery?”

Sam seemed to lose some of his steam at that, and he ran a hand over his hair, down his face, across his mouth. His hair and makeup were still perfect. He still looked every inch the enchanting prince. It was strange though, because there was nothing of Prince Adam in the way he moved. No grace, no easy elegance. It was strange to realize how much of it was an act, just like it had been strange to see his Beast costume head without Sam inside it. Sam wasn’t his character, just like Dean wasn’t just an observation subject in a fishbowl, and Castiel _knew_ that. But it was hard to recognize that disconnect when he was still here in his gilded waistcoat and blue jacket.

“They tell me it’s an easy fix. That—that his pacemaker just had a little malfunction and his heart wasn’t beating right,” he said, voice shaking. His lips twitched, and Castiel could see his jaw tighten, the tendons in his neck jumping in response. “But when you called me and told me that he’d collapsed in the middle of Frontierland, I thought it was the end. I always do.”

Castiel’s mouth was dry. “Pacemaker?” he said on a croak. That didn’t make much sense, because _older_ people had pacemakers. His grandfather had had a pacemaker, before he’d died. Pretty young princes in Disneyland didn’t have pacemakers. Sam furrowed his brow.

“Yeah. His pacemaker. He told me that he told you. So that you could keep an eye out for symptoms.”

“He didn’t—I didn’t…”

Sam barked out a hard laugh, looking toward the ceiling and shaking his head. His ponytail whooshed elegantly across his broad shoulders. “I should have _known_ he didn’t, of _course_ he didn’t. I bet he had you lining up for the Big Thunder Railroad with him and convincing you to let him do all kinds of things he shouldn’t.”

“No. He told me that he—” the word choice from before came to mind, and it squeezed at Castiel’s belly. Dean had said _can’t._ He’d told Castiel that he _couldn’t_. Castiel felt a shock self-loathing when he thought of how he had tried to get Dean aboard those rides himself. “We just rode the little rides together. Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World…” Rattling off the names brought him a rush of sick fondness.

“Well at least he learned his lesson, there. Big Thunder Railroad was how he had his second heart attack.”

Castiel’s eyes widened. “His _second—_ ”

“When he was sixteen. He was such an idiot. Dad was so _pissed_. He swore right up until he died that they have those warning signs about weak hearts just for Dean’s stupid sake.”

Sam looked like he couldn’t work out whether he wanted to pace or collapse. He settled for falling back into the chair and violently vibrating his leg in jittery up-down-up-down motions. Every once in a while, he would flick his eyes toward the television, where the final showdown between Aladdin and Jafar was happening. The kids just watched him watching.

“Is Dean sick?” Castiel said a little desperately, because his mind was tempestuous with hindsight, suddenly very cruelly aware of every single issue Dean had ever had in his presence, suddenly very observant of every little flinch and every little touch to his chest.

“When we were little,” Sam said, “my mom used to tell it like a fairytale. I always wondered why my big brother was so tired, why he was always in the hospital, and my mom only knew how to communicate in fairytales, because that was how she looked at the world.” Sam inhaled deep, exhaled long, started a story that he clearly knew in rote. “ _Once upon a time, there was a little prince with big green eyes. He was the sweetest, kindest, most brave soul, and he had a little brother whom he loved very, very much. He had more heart than anyone the world had ever known,”_ Sam choked on the words, “ _but it was almost too much to contain in his little chest. So when he was born.”_ The well-rehearsed words ground to a halt, and instead, Sam sputtered out a hearty _fuck_. “When he was born, he had a defect in his heart. That’s what my mom never said. My dad just straight-up told me right after she died, no more fairytales. He’s been in and out of hospitals his whole life. There.” He turned in his seat toward the swinging double doors beyond the nurses’ station that led to, presumably, the surgical suites beyond. “You hear that Dean? Fuck you, I can’t believe I had to tell _your_ boyfriend about your own goddamn heart issue.”

 “Is he—” Cas floundered to reconcile this. The Dean he knew with the Dean that Sam apparently did. The Dean that made him bat at anyone who startled Dean, who hit Dean. The Dean that made Sam want to _protect_. The Dean that Cas knew made Castiel want to cower and cry in his arms, because the Dean that Castiel knew had always seemed invincible.“Will he be okay?”

“No,” Sam snapped, and it hit Castiel’s heart like an arrow, all the Beastly bite and growl behind it that he’d been warned of. “He needs a transplant. It’s the only option for him now. He’s been on the list since he was nineteen. And if he isn’t _careful_ with himself, if he doesn’t _stop_ and fucking _take a break_ , he isn’t going to _last_ long enough to get one.” Sam was almost shouting by the end, and the kids behind the couch slunk back to the floor, back to Aladdin and the red-tinted nightmare world that was the end of the film.

Jasmine was in an hourglass, pounding hard at the glass. The anxiety clenched in Castiel’s chest, but it didn’t manage to silence him.

“He doesn’t want that,” Castiel said quietly, the realization dawning like the split-second just before you crested the hill in Pirates of the Caribbean and tipped back onto level ground— _splash_ and back into the real world. “He just—he wants to be happy.”

“Fuck off, I don’t care what he wants,” Sam said. It was all the same anger, but it got stuffed up in his nose, like there were tears behind it, and it made him sound like one of the sulky children that he and Dean had helped in the park. Castiel could imagine that he must have had a lot of practice with Sam growing up. “ _I_ want him to be alive. He should just come live with me and Jess.”

“He wants _you_ to be happy.”

Sam looked up through his eyelashes and rubbed the little-boy trails of snot out from under his nose. In that moment, he looked more a kid in a Halloween costume than he did a towering, muscular law school student. “Yeah, for however long he’s still _alive_ ,” he bit out.

“Yes,” Castiel said distantly. “I suppose so.”

A solemn pause.

“You too,” he said softy. “He wants you to be happy, too.”

“Me too,” Castiel agreed on a breath, completely baffled, totally awestruck by the thought. He wants _me_ to be happy, no matter what I think I deserve. He said it again, like that would make it a less frightening thought. “Me too.”

Dean had told him again and again, in so many words. All the little touches and gestures. He never could seem to fathom the way that Castiel was putting off taking pleasure in his own life because it wasn’t going just like how he wanted it to, and maybe Castiel could see _why_ now. When you’d lived your whole life with a looming expiration date and a ticking time bomb in your chest, it must have been unfathomable, the way that Castiel had lived the last two years of his life.

“And every-fucking-body else. How can someone so selfish be so selfless at the same time?” Sam said. His face disappeared into his hands, so the rest of the words came out muffled. His knee was still rattling like the wobbling carts on a rollercoaster track going top speed. “He got it from our mom. I never got the hang of it. And god knows my dad never did.” Sam pulled his face up, fixated on the television across the room. “After Mom died, Walt Disney raised us as much as anyone did. It was bad enough that Mom and Dad were working in the park, but then he was in kids’ wards all the time, too sick to really get up and play, and he just—watched them on repeat. Half the time dad would leave me too while he worked some graveyard shift at the park, and we’d get stuck in some looping, endless repeat of _101 Dalmatians_ until we could quote Jasper and Horace’s back and forths verbatim.”

The both of them watched as Aladdin made the final move in the decisive battle—a clean, calculated thwarting that would happen each and every time they watched the movie. It would never change.

Castiel could see now why Dean sought the movement of the animated bodies if there were points in his life where moving had been difficult for him. Honestly, the amount of realism and fluidity that he managed to portray could have only come from a place of abject yearning.

It made so much sense that it was kind of disgustingly stupid that Castiel hadn’t picked up on any of this before.

“Thank you, Sam,” Castiel said. “For telling me all this. I know you don’t know me very well…”

Sam smacked his knees, waved a hand dismissively in front of his face.

“It’s obvious that Dean cares about you. He spent the first week after you showed up at his window on Main Street humming ‘Someday My Prince Will Come.’ It was pathetic,” Sam smirked, wiping at the wet tear trails on his cheeks. “And hilarious.”

Castiel felt himself going red. He was still very much getting used to the idea that somebody could want him.

“He—he did?”

“Yeah.” Sam eyed him up and down. “You’re pretty oblivious, aren’t you?”

Castiel blinked. That was one word for it.

When the movie faded into the end credits, he was free to notice the children again, unnaturally quiet and solemn on the rug still, and it reminded him. “Dean would very much dislike the way that you spoke in front of those children.”

Sam looked over at the TV area, where the kids had turned their attention to the man who had been filling out the forms more than they were watching Sam, now. He was clearly their father. He was talking anxiously to a nurse on the other side of the waiting room, gesticulating between the kids and the doors to the surgical suites. It wasn’t difficult, even for Castiel, to tell that they had another parent on the other side of those double doors.

Sam looked down at his suit jacket, his entire costume, as if he was seeing it for the first time.

“If Dean knew about this,” Sam said, cheeks still so deceptively rosy, “He’d kill me. And probably get me fired.”

He set about straightening himself, making certain that his hair was still in order, straightening the shiny buttons and gilded lapels and poofy undershirt. “Dean always wanted to be a character actor. He always wanted to work with the kids like our mom, but. He just doesn’t have the stamina, y’know? They shut him down pretty hard.” He patted his own cheeks, like he was trying to give them more color. “So I guess I gotta do _everything_ for him.”

He looked at Castiel straight-on as he stood, once again his full height, and once again taking on the elegant mannerisms of the prince, his hands folding into each other behind his back with, long, spindly grace. “Maybe you’re not so oblivious after all, huh dude?” And he lifted his brow and smiled.

And then Sam made his regal way over to the kids and sat on the floor and had as princely, apologetic discussion with them as he could, considering they had just witnessed him on the verge of a breakdown. Castiel watched them smile and surprised himself with how much he liked it, with how much it sent something warm blossoming into his gut.

A while ago, when they’d first been introduced, Dean had attributed Sam overcoming his awkwardness to his girlfriend, but Castiel could see exactly where the impetus to take care of these children came from in every single movement Sam made. He’d watched Dean long enough to recognize the particular way he inclined his head to listen to kids, to recognize the smile he reserved just for children. And his decision to help them, to put aside whatever hurt he was harboring, Castiel knew, was little more than a byproduct of their unspoken acknowledgement and agreement of where Dean’s priorities would be, were he here now.

He would want them to be happy.

He would just want them all to be happy.

* * *

Sam gave him a ride home. Dean’s surgery, Sam assured him, was one that he’d had before, and one that was relatively routine. Sam would be allowed in his room when he woke up in recovery, but Castiel would not.

“They’ll keep him for a couple days to monitor his heart rate, but pacemaker stuff is pretty minor all things considered.” They both agreed that Castiel could see him tomorrow.

When he managed to fumble his keys into the lock and swung open the door, he found Gabriel in socked-feet and full Jungle Cruise uniform standing on his bed and facing the wall, hammer poised behind his head to drive a slim nail into one of Castiel’s black feathers.

“Gabriel?” he stepped forward a few strides, and stopped when his toe encountered something solid on the floor. He looked down to find most of his pilfered feathers laid out on a majority of the available living room floor space in a massive, sprawling pattern that looked just like—Castiel tilted his head.

Like wings.

Big black wings, charred into their carpet.

“Don’t step on those!” Gabriel said urgently. “It’s the mural I promised you—all laid out and ready to go! I spent like an hour figuring out the pattern.” Castiel took a hasty step backward. “Sheesh, you’re here early. I thought I wasn’t bound to come pick you up for,” he glanced down at the wrist on his hammer-swinging hand as if he was expecting a watch, and when he found none, he harrumphed, jumped lightly off the bed, and went into the kitchen to look at the digital clock on the stove. “Oh,” he said sheepishly. “Uh, like an hour ago.” His head appeared around the corner of the kitchen wall. “Sorry kid. I wanted it to be a surprise, but I lost track of time when I remembered I was a shitty artist.” He waved vaguely at the wing shapes on the ground, then rubbed at the back of his head, nearly braining himself with the hammer in the process. “Who gave you a ride home?”

“Sam Winchester.”

“The beefcake brother?” Castiel nodded slowly. Gabriel took a step toward him, carefully sidestepping the feathers on the ground. “You look a little weird bro, you doing okay?”

“It has come to my attention that I am very selfish.”

Gabriel took hold of him by either shoulder, looking up into his eyes. His little bowed mouth was drawn up into a twist.

“What?”

“I am exceedingly selfish. And not in a particularly productive way.”

“What happened on your date, man? Did your boyfriend say something dickish to you?”

Castiel shook his head listlessly. “No. I think he had a heart attack. Or something like it, anyway.”

“What?” Gabriel blinked up at him and started patting him up and down, like he was the one who had to have emergency surgery, like he would find some secret new scar on his chest.

“He had a heart attack,” Castiel said, tolerating the attentions easily, jostling this way and that under his brother’s hands. “He collapsed in the park.”

“I’m sorry, a _heart attack_? Did he age a couple decades while I wasn’t looking?”

“He had to have emergency surgery for his—his pacemaker,” he said  

“…Pacemaker. Right. So he was secretly seventy years old the whole time. That was the catch. I knew he was just a little bit _too_ perfect.”

“He has a heart defect,” Castiel said, and he could feel the sort of blank way the information came out of him. Like a piece of paper coming out of a printer. Just an innocuous statement of fact. “I went to the hospital. I just. I just came from the hospital.”

“And you didn’t think to call me?”

“I did,” Castiel breathed out through his nose. “I called you eight times.”

Gabriel let go of his brother and did a short-legged little leap over his handiwork to Castiel’s nightstand and cast frantically about, probably looking for his phone. When he didn’t find it there, he patted at all the pockets on his uniform like he’d patted at Castiel just a few minutes ago—legs, sides, chest. He leaped over his pattern on the floor again, back to his bedroom. Castiel could hear him throwing things around behind the thin wall.

Without Gabriel keeping him up, Castiel felt a little unsteady, a little tired, and his bed was covered in nails from Gabriel’s impromptu arts and crafts session, so it was easier to just sink to his knees and scootch himself over to the only empty space on the carpet big enough to sprawl on—the swathe of carpet just between the wings. He looked up at the ceiling, reached a hand out to pet at the plastic feathers at his side. He hadn’t even realized he’d stolen this many. It had never seemed like this many before. He had been at it for a very long time. _Here_ a very long time. Were these feathers really all he had to show for it?

“Crap!” he heard from the other room. As Gabriel continued, the voice got louder, and Castiel felt footsteps shaking the floor beneath him, jostling the feathers around him ever so slightly. “I must’ve left my cell phone in my piano-playing pants at work. Sorry, Cas.” Gabriel’s head appeared above him, tilted, hair flopping over his forehead and skittering over his cheeks. “You doing okay there champ?”

Castiel shrugged as best he could from his position on the ground.

“Is he—is he going to be okay?” Gabriel asked cautiously, eyes narrowed.

“Sam says the surgery is very routine.” Gabriel pulled out of his line of sight, but he could hear him just above him, sitting down on the carpet next to his head. He was very careful not to jostle his handiwork, knees pulled up tight so they didn’t bump the feathers.

“Then you should buck up. He’ll live. You two’ll be stupid and romantic again before you even know it.”

“He won’t live.” Castiel picked up one of the feathers, hoisting it above his head. It reflected spots of light back down into his face. “Unless he—he needs a heart transplant.”

A pause. Flickers of his own feelings in Gabriel’s drawn out silence.

“Christ,” Gabriel said, whistling lowly between his teeth. “That’s heavy.”

Castiel pulled the hand with the feather down to his chest and cradled it there for a moment.

“I should have noticed.”

“What?”

“I was—exceedingly selfish. The signs were all there.” Castiel stroked the little feather with his thumb so hard it squeaked.

Gabriel reached out a hand to put over his when the squeaking got obnoxious. “Did Sam say that?”

He tilted his head back to try to get a glimpse of Gabriel’s face, but he was just beyond his line of sight from this angle. He could just catch the tip of his chin.

“No. He didn’t. He didn’t seem to think I should blame myself.”

“Then you shouldn’t.”

“He deteriorated right before my eyes. I was just—too caught up in myself…”

Gabriel leaned into his line of sight again, and for the first time in a long time, Castiel realized that he looked his age. He always forgot that Gabriel was so much older than him because Gabriel acted like a child, and he was in a position that allowed him to continue to act like a child—encouraged it, even. But at the same time, he was more adult than Castiel. He made responsible adult choices, and he paid the rent, and he bought the vegetables in the house, and maintained actual adult relationships with people outside the house, and hell—he cleaned the toilet. He’d struck a balance in his life. One that Castiel needed.

“Do you want me to tell you that you’re not selfish?” He put a hand in the fringe of Castiel’s hair, pushing it away from his temples. “Christ, I’m not gonna do that. You wrote the book on being self-centered these last couple years. And you illustrated it. And then you self-published it on Amazon. But—you deserved it for a long time. You got hurt. Mom and Dad were douchenozzles—and your little fuckwad college boyfriend. And _Daphne_ and her marriage of convenience.” Gabriel’s fingers stiffened at his temple, righteous older-brother rage that he could _feel_. “You had a rough go, sport. You deserved to be selfish for a little while.” He drew his hand back. “Your problem was turning that selfishness into something self-destructive. Because suddenly everything wasn’t just about you—it was about everything being out to get you.”

Castiel squinched his eyes closed. “You’re psychoanalyzing me, Gabriel.”

“Shhh. I’m doing a damn good job of it,” he swatted Castiel’s forehead. “Dean—you looking at him. It was the first time I’d seen you want something in all these two years. That look on your face. I think that’s when I remembered that you used to look that way all the time when you were a little kid. Flowers and bees and stars and books. And you watched _Pinocchio_ and you…” A deep breath. “I dunno much about this Dean kid, but. He made you like stuff again. He brought my baby bro back. And if he’s sick, then we’ll do what we can to help him.”

Castiel was acutely aware of the ground underneath his shoulder blades. He felt rooted by his chest, vines spreading out around him and pulsing deeply in all the little pieces of the life he had made here. He opened his eyes, and he felt like he was really _here_.

“I want to be happy again,” he said. His voice cracked. And he did, he realized. There were bits of it, emerging piece by piece from behind his careful malaise, just enough that now he was _hungry_ for it. Dean’s smile. Dean’s laugh. A realization, long in coming, that happiness wasn’t an endpoint. _Happily ever after_ wasn’t a switch you flipped at the end of the movie.

He could be happily ever after right now. Ever after could start today. For Dean, maybe right now was all the _ever after_ he had.

“If you’re sick,” Gabriel said simply, “then we’ll help you, too.”

There were tears at his temples, leaking down from his eyes, straight into his hairline. Wordlessly, Gabriel joined him on the ground, and they laid side by side on their carpet, helpless and fallen and hopeful between an ashy pair of wings.

* * *

“You couldn’t be bothered to tell me that you had a life-threatening congenital heart condition,” Castiel said, standing in the doorway of a sterile white recovery room. In his arms, he carried a folded pink comforter, smiling faces warped by how tight he had them pulled against his chest.

Dean shrugged weakly. “You—you couldn’t be bothered to ask?” Castiel had never seen Dean outside of the park before, and the first time, being like this—it was. It was a shock. He looked like the bed had taken hold of him; he had sunk back deep into the mattress, completely lax against its hold. But he grinned for Castiel, and it gave his face depth. It clearly wasn’t an accusation, though it probably should have been. Dean pointed to the honeymooners and divorcees, the sisters and brothers, the happy and sad, and he knew their entire life stories. Castiel had started to notice the very, very basics.

He still wondered—how he could have been expected to notice something like this, when Dean was only ever the most perfect thing he’d seen in his life? Castiel had only just barely noticed that Dean could be _sad_.

“S’at for me?” Castiel shook himself back into attentiveness.

“It’s for us,” he said briskly. He spread the little twin comforter over Dean in one windy swoop. It flared out into the air dramatically and gusted gently to rest over his legs. He smiled a lopsided smile as he ran his hands reverently over each of the princess’s faces in turn. His arms were _thin_ , and Castiel realized that it was the first time he’d ever really seen them outside the eerie dark glow of The Haunted Mansion, the one time he’d ever really removed his jacket in front of Castiel. Now, it seemed more like the book of scary stories that Gabriel used to read from when he was a kid than it seemed like a Disney fairytale—the one with the girl who wore a green ribbon around her neck for her entire life. When she took it off, her husband found out it had been the only thing that had been keeping her head on through the entirety of their lives together. He stood by the bed railing, looking down at Dean. He was close enough to touch.

Feeling daring, he ran his hand up the dark, purple vein on the underside of his pale arm, right up until he ran into the patch of white tape over the IV line in the crook of his elbow.

“You always wear your jacket. I never…”

“M’always cold,” he said. “Seriously. When your heart doesn’t work so well, it doesn’t exactly keep the warm blood pumpin’.”

At that, Castiel nodded decisively, scaled the hospital bed’s railing, and butted up under his princess comforter next to Dean, carefully avoiding all the wires that were running out from under Dean’s hospital gown, all the monitors and tubes that had him stuck in place. He was clearly confused, and he tried to get his hands under himself, tried to scoot a little to the other side of the bed to make room, but the heart monitor screeched at him, and Castiel just tentacled himself around Dean’s middle and tipped sideways, letting Dean stay where he was. The hand closest to Cas had an IV, and the one that he reached out to hold had an oxygen monitor clenched on the middle finger.

“There are other side effects. Besides the cold.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “You’ve probably noticed. The worst of ‘em is probably how I couldn’t even get it up for the handsomest fuck in Disneyland for one measly handjob on the Haunted Mansion. One of my greatest regrets.”

Castiel snorted, nuzzled in closer to his chest, and didn’t care in the slightest.

“You’re weirdly affectionate today,” Dean said. “They’re gonna be pissed if they come in here and see you like this.” He settled in regardless, sinking further back into the incline of the bed and closing his eyes like that much had exhausted him. He sighed contentedly. Usually, for the park, Dean was fairly clean-shaven—they required all the cast members to be. Today, he had two days of stubble on his face. Castiel reached up to stroke it curiously, felt the way it chafed against his skin. It was just another pronounced, uncomfortable difference in the way he looked.

“You were cold.”

Dean grinned under his fingers. “Guess I’m not anymore,” he said. “Can’t argue with that logic.”

His voice was gruff like he hadn’t been using it, like the oxygen cannula under his nose had dried it out. They sat in silence for a moment, and Dean seemed completely content to not acknowledge the giant, big-eared elephant in the room.

“So,” Castiel said matter-of-factly. “You need a heart transplant,”

“Yeah,” Dean said without opening his eyes. “Sorry.”

“Sorry,” Castiel parroted, completely flat.

“For—not telling you. I guess.” He sighed. “Look, I knew something wasn’t seriously wrong, ‘cause I’ve done seriously wrong before. Sometimes it’s the little shit that sneaks up on you.”

It had been a technical problem with the pacemaker, Sam had said this morning when they’d met in the lobby, Sam on his way out and Cas on his way in. They could have detected it earlier before it escalated, but Dean was one sneaky sonuvabitch about his problems, and Sam had a girlfriend and Cas had depression and it just went right on under their noses.

Castiel thought maybe he wanted to be angry that he hadn’t told him, but it was hard. On the one hand, he could have looked out for him, and maybe they wouldn’t be here. Maybe they could have done a scan that found the misplaced lead on his pacemaker before he’d ended up with another hole in his chest. On the other hand, Dean was so _happy_. It sucked, being reminded of the things that hurt you all the time. Castiel knew because he did an excellent job of consistently reminding himself.

“I—does it look like.” Castiel licked his lips. “I mean. That they’ll find a donor?”

Dean squirmed uncomfortably. “Shit, I’m not a priority yet. There’s people who’ve got it worse than I do waitin’ on that stupid list.”

“Dean.”

“What?” he snapped. “Pacemaker’s kept me goin’ alright so far, hasn’t it?”

The reconstructive surgical efforts and the lifestyle changes and Sam’s nagging had kept him going so far, according to Sam. Sam was quick to say that they didn’t know how long, no one knew how long. Because it could be a second, and something could give, and there’d be blood in the wrong chamber and it’d be done.

“‘Alright’ seems insufficient when it comes to the function of the most important muscle in your body.”

“I’ll get it when I need it.”

“You seem very sure.”

Dean cracked open his eyes, green in his pale face. “Yeah, well. You know the song,” He cleared his throat and mucus crackled high in his chest. When he started singing, it was deep and throaty and off-key and rich. “ _No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true_.” His breath gusted straight into Castiel’s hair, warm and a little sour.

He put the oxygen monitor hand, still tangled with Cas’s, delicately over the heavily bandaged incision in his chest. Castiel could feel the measured thumping in time with the heart rate monitor on the side of the bed.

Every few seconds, there was the sound of a little puff of oxygen from the cannula, like a little sigh. Dean’s lips were chapped, and Cas stared at them.

“Do you remember that I—tried to kiss you?” Castiel said, licking his own lips in sympathy. “Because I did. Try.”

Dean scrunched up his face, trying to remember. “No, man, sorry. Last night is kinda a blur.” He grinned salaciously. “Was I awesome?”

“You vomited,” Castiel said. “And you started mumbling about pink elephants.”

Dean barked out a laugh, and it crinkled the skin around his eyes. The hospital bed, how shitty he clearly felt—these things made Dean look older, but when he laughed, he looked just as young as he did when he was talking along with a skull and crossbones or singing with a bunch of enchanted parrots.

Castiel laughed too. That seemed to startle Dean.

“Well. You know, usually people don’t have complaints. We’ll have to retry.”

“It was our first kiss.”

“Naw. I don’t remember it. Maybe it was your first kiss, but I call do-over.”

“I don’t think you can call—”

“I can and I do. We should pick a controlled environment so it doesn’t suck so much next time.”

“Can’t I—can I kiss you now?”

“Naw, man. I’m not that kind of girl. Remember how we talked about waiting for it?” He snickered. “Also, I tossed my cookies like three times from the anesthesia when I woke up this morning and I’ve got a goddamn tube in my dick, so I seriously don’t think you want to.”

Castiel thought of the first ride he worked, the one he’d worked the longest, the one he’d never ridden, because he was a raging asshat.

“Can I kiss you on the Dumbo ride?”

“Sure. It’s a date.” Dean grinned. “I thought maybe you’d go more romantic, like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride or Star Tours, but I guess yours works too.”

Castiel couldn’t stop looking at Dean. It was like seeing him for the first time, for some reason, even though he’d thought, from that very first moment through the window, that he couldn’t possibly appreciate him any more than that.

 “I think I loved you from the moment I saw you,” Castiel said suddenly, matter-of-fact. And Dean just responded in turn, and Castiel knew now, at this point, there wasn’t any doubt of what he would say in return. He’d seen it there in his face all along.

“Yeah, man,” he said. “Me too. Isn’t that the pisser?” He yawned. “Disney makes up all this shit, and they bullshit their way through all these happily ever afters and fairytale marriages and talking woodland creatures and fancy slippers and flying fuckin’ carpets, and then just when you think it isn’t possible, bam—you get blindsided by something stupid like love at first sight. Makes you wonder what other shit is possible.”

 Dean fell asleep beside him after not too much longer, breath even and whistling a little in his nose, and Castiel spent a long time after that wondering what other _shit was possible_ now that happiness was a thing he could have.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean walked very, very slowly. Very carefully. Castiel watched him like a hawk.

“I’m fine,” he said, hand to the swathe of bandage peeking out from his collar at the center of his chest. “Fuck, just gimme a minute.” He swatted at Castiel’s arm where it hovered protectively around his shoulders, and Castiel took the pause as an opportunity to give the stink-eye to everyone surrounding them, daring anyone to get to close. It was early yet and still chilly out, edging now into December, but Dean couldn’t be in the park at midday, when the crowds of people would intensify. It wasn’t really okay for him to be jostled right now.

“We don’t have to do this now,” Castiel said. Dean waved him off, took another cautious step forward. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take a wheelchair with us? I know you want to make the walk, and I know the doctor said it was okay, but—”

“We’ll,” he said breathlessly. “We’ll rest in Fantasyland. I’m just anxious to try this whole deal over again, Romeo.” He panted. “You should be flattered.”

They walked past the statue of Walt and Mickey Mouse in the center of the park, and Dean nodded respectfully and Cas did too, just because Dean had. But he could see how it might make someone emotional now. Emotions like that were emerging from the fog for him, little by little, every day. Today, Walt’s smile put a twinge of something in his chest. Maybe someday it would make him cry, too.

Fantasyland came with cobblestones that made it more difficult to maneuver the ground, and Dean tripped over his own feet because he wasn’t lifting them up high enough. Castiel caught him twice, chastised him twice.

Dean groused, “I liked it better when I got to baby _you_ ,” under his breath. “This blows.”

“You know who whines?” Castiel threw back at him sagely, keeping Dean from another spill with a hold on his belt loop. “ _Babies_.”

They gave Dean a pass to the front of the Dumbo ride. Castiel went with him, guiding him around the fountain with one hand on his shoulder with easy, practiced motions. He knew how to help people navigate this ride. He’d done it on autopilot for so long that when he was actually thinking about what he was doing, it was the easiest thing in the world.

They looked studiously at the little green-cloaked elephant before them.

“I know the doctor said it was alright for you to get light exercise,” Castiel said dubiously. “But did they really—”

“Shut up, Cas. We’re flying an elephant, and I’m gonna kiss your stupid face. We’re doing this right.”

He painstakingly lifted one foot, then the other, into the ride, scootched all the way over on the bench seat and patted beside him before he put his hand on the joystick like an anxious little kid.

It was Garth attending on them, and he hovered nervously, nametag upside-down like he hadn’t cleaned his uniform since the last time Castiel had worked with him.

“I see you still haven’t landed the Goofy audition,” Castiel said. Garth chuckled as he waited for Cas to get in, lowering the guardrail behind him.

“Someday, my friend. Plenty glad with where I am in the meanwhile,” Garth said, patting their Dumbo’s trunk fondly. “See you’re still as much of a sourpuss as ever.”

Castiel thought about that, but managed a, “No. Not really.” And then he smiled, which seemed to totally throw Garth, and Castiel wondered if it was really _that_ much of an unusual occurrence.

It wasn’t until after Garth had left that he realized their advance rider status meant that they didn’t get a feather.

Timothy mouse started talking; the ride started moving. When Castiel sent their elephant up just a few feet, Dean grabbed at his shirt and groaned, clearly surprised with himself. “Shit. Shit dude, we might have to fly low today. M’a little nauseated.”

“I told you this was a bad idea. I don’t want to first-kiss you if you’re just going to vomit again. Once is an accident, but twice and it becomes habit.” Dean just held up a hand, a _hold on_ gesture, while he composed himself, and Cas left well enough alone and kept they Dumbo flying as low as it could possibly go. They looked silly going in their slow circle, two grown men so close to the ground as little boys and girls made extravagant looping up-down circles around them. Dean breathed through his nose for close to thirty seconds. The ride was only a minute and a half long.

When Dean put his hand down, waved a little _go on_ gesture instead, Castiel leaned to the side and pecked Dean on the side of his mouth, and he could feel with Dean’s lips more than anything when they quirked up into a smile and Dean turned his head to kiss back. They bumped noses twice and got a round of _oooooh_ s from a smart-mouthed group of teenagers waiting in line, and none of it hurt.

Rather—it was a feeling similar to the one he got on Space Mountain, the light-headed feeling of _flight_.

As Castiel pulled away, he said, “They’ll find you a transplant.”

Dean laughed. “Of course. Just gotta keep the old ticker going in the meantime.” He gave a gentle thump to the new scar on his chest. “And you’ll stop workin’ Small World one of these days. Stop lounging on your brother’s couch.”

“I have a bed now,” Castiel said.

“I know you do, baby.”

Castiel still didn’t know that he was good at much, and Dean never knew how much longer his heart was going to last, but for now there was this and it was okay and it was alright to be somewhere, in the middle of things. And happy.

He smiled, just softly, against the breeze, into Dean’s shoulder.

Dumbo didn’t need the feather to fly. Neither did Castiel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for everything, guys. Come say hello at my [tumblr](http://schmerzerling.tumblr.com).


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